Latibule
by DreadNot
Summary: Family issues, ghost ships, curses, prophecies, traps, adventure and dance. Anders and Fenris observe Hawke and Isabela's relationship with each other and Isabela's relationship with her mother while navigating their own rough seas. Volutions 6.
1. Prologue

_A/N: This story is another installment in the Volutions AU series that includes Nautilus, Grotesquerie, Haspenald, Anaxiphilia, Basorexia, and Alexithymia posted here on ff net, as well as other stories posted on AO3. In particular Cingulomania cannot be posted here on ff net because of explicit sexual content. If you are interested in reading more from the Volutions series, please check the link in my profile that will take you to the AO3 Volutions series page._

_While Nautilus and Grotesquerie were not Anders/Fenris stories, Latibule is an Anders/Fenris story and sees their long dance around each other come to a certain level of understanding. I hope you enjoy._

* * *

><p>The sun slid low on the horizon, burning clouds and sea with colors vivid enough to make an artist weep for his palette's limitations. On the Silverite Maiden, a few crewmen were lighting lanterns before all light slipped out of the sky, but the majority of the crew were gathered in a loose circle on deck, clapping their hands or singing to the strains of pipe and accordion.<p>

_Up aloft amid the rigging  
>Blows the loud exulting gale<em>

Two men moved together in the center of the circle - one tall, ruddy, and fair-haired, clad in a shabby coat half-held together with bandages, feathers, and hope; the other smaller, darker despite the shock of white hair made all the more stark by his black leather armor and aggressively spiked black pauldrons. They danced bound at the wrists by a length of blue cloth generously (and laughingly) donated to them by a friend.

_Like a bird's wide outstretched pinions  
>Spreads on high each swelling sail<em>

Their friend stood at the edge of the circle, clapping and singing along with the sailors, smiling and apparently at ease. She leaned against a taller, bearded man, who clapped and smiled, holding her under his coat to protect her from the bitter cold ocean breeze she seemed not to notice despite the large expanses of skin left bare between the tops of her boots and the bottom of her short shift dress.

Some people, she had said, provided their own warmth on cold days and colder nights.

_And the wild waves cleft behind us  
>Seem to murmur as they flow<em>

The dancing men moved as one through a dance the sailors might never have danced themselves, but recognized instinctively - the stalk, the chase, the turning away only to be drawn back by a sharp tug on the cloth that bound them.

The moments when eyes met and lips were close enough to share breath before another pulling away, in fear or contempt or simply as demanded by the motion of the ship and the call of the sea.

Until the last few words of the song fell into the silence left when the accordion went still, the clapping stopped, and the piper took the pipe from his lips.

_There are loving hearts that wait you  
>In the land to which you go<em>

The two men stopped, chest to chest, eye to eye, and stayed there until a familiar laugh finally broke the spell.

"Just kiss him already!"

But first, the beginning…


	2. Chapter 1

"What I'm saying," Anders said past the screen of the cards he held in front of his face in the hopes of hiding his reaction to his shitty hand, "is that just because a mabari is bigger doesn't mean that it's better than a cat."

Fenris gave a derisive snort and pushed a few coppers out into the center of the table. "And how many darkspawn has your cat killed?"

Hawke nodded in agreement with Fenris' point. "I'd rather have Brutal by my side in the Deep Roads." Adding under his breath, "Or anywhere else." He dropped his legs off one of the Hanged Man's more rickety stools to sit upright before he added his coins to the pot.

Merrill added coppers to the pot from the meager pile in front of her. "We shouldn't measure something's value just by how much it can kill."

"I heard that," Anders said to Hawke as he threw his coppers into the pot with rather too much force. "And as much as I hate to agree with Merrill…."

"Then do not," Fenris said, cutting Anders off as he laid out his hand on the table. "Hawke agrees with me. Mabari are more useful, more loyal, and smarter than cats."

"If Brutal's so smart, why does Ser Pounce-a-lot ride him like a horse?" Anders retorted, throwing his cards face down in disgust in the face of another winning hand from Fenris.

Hawke groaned and dropped his own cards before burying his face in his hands. "I said that cat had to go," he grumbled under his breath.

Anders ignored the stab of pain he felt hearing that. It wasn't that Hawke meant anything by it, but Anders had stayed under Hawke's roof for more than a month and he felt that he was overstaying his welcome. Never mind that Hawke would not hear of him leaving, nor would Fenris hear of him returning to his clinic alone. Where else was he supposed to go? Fenris' house? Not bloody likely.

Fenris - that bastard who had run the moment he had a chance to after what had happened in Varric's suite the night Pietro had drugged Anders. Oh, he came back every day, but only to escort Anders to and from his clinic, or to and from the Hanged Man. Anders wanted… he was not sure what he wanted, but he knew that he did not want a _bodyguard._

It was ten steps back in Anders' estimation, and it was not enough to just see Fenris for these impersonal errands. Even Justice had started to come around to respect for Fenris past Anders' far more personal interest, and then the blighted elf had gone and run.

That was Anders' specialty. It wasn't _fair._

Isabela leaned over him to set a tray of drinks on the table, pressing her breasts against his shoulder as she did so. Ever since his adventure with the Green Giant, they all took turns taking the group's drink orders directly to Corff, never letting the bartender out of their sight until the drinks were on the tray. As Isabela had said when they unanimously adopted the precaution – they all had someone in their lives, past, present, or future, who might not stop with just a bit of Green Giant.

"What do you think?" Anders asked her as he squirmed out from under her breasts, eyes flicking toward Fenris to take some comfort in the glower he was giving Isabela. "Cats or dogs?"

"I think," she said as she took her own mug off the tray and raised her eyes to the door when it opened to admit a blast of icy air and two newcomers.

"I think..."

Anders did not see Isabela's smile disappear when her response trailed off, but he saw Hawke's expression sharpen before Hawke turned to follow her gaze. Anders glanced over his shoulder to see that most of the blood had drained from her face leaving her skin a sallow mask that did nothing to conceal her shock. She inhaled shakily before the blood flooded back into her cheeks in a hectic rush, her brows drew down and her lips pressed into a thin line.

"Get out." She set her mug down hard enough to splatter ale on the table and thrust a finger toward the newcomers, or perhaps toward the door. "Before I throw you out."

Around the tavern men and woman eased away from the Champion's table and the strangers alike.

At Hawke's table no one understood the reason for Isabela's sudden anger, but her friends rose from their seats and turned to face the source of it.

The woman who stood in the doorway hardly seemed like enough of a hazard to have Isabela near to trembling with rage, but there was no doubt that their blithe pirate was anything but blithe at the moment.

"Isabela?" Hawke asked, moving around the table to her side. "Is this an old friend?"

The name Anders suspected was in Hawke's mind as well as his own was "Castillon." After the Qunari rebellion, she had lost the Tome of Koslun for the mysterious man a second time, and Hawke had privately told each of her friends to be aware of the name should he come for vengeance.

Gold glinted at the newcomer's lip and nose in addition to the heavy gold at her ears and throat when she tilted her head at Isabela. "They told me you were using a different name, Dove."

Isabela shook her head and took a step back into the hand Hawke had settled in the small of her back."Don't call me that."

Anders had never heard the normally confident woman sound so unsure. He picked up his staff from where it had been leaning against the table while he lost still more coin to Fenris. No one was allowed to put Isabela off-balance but one of them.

Hawke said what everyone was thinking. "Looks like you aren't welcome here."

The woman barely glanced away from Isabela to examine her friends before returning her attention to Isabela, but the instant's eye contact struck a chord of recognition in Anders. Those eyes – those radiant brown eyes in rich brown skin.

He dared to look to Isabela and back to the newcomer – the same eyes, the same jaw, and while the woman's hair was threaded with grey, it was the same shade as Isabela's. Still, all that said for certain that they were both Rivaini, just as the gem-studded jewelry in her lip, nose, and ears said that she was a Rivaini of some status.

A Rivaini like the hulking man behind the woman who finally pushed his hood back to reveal the same nut brown complexion and those same luminous eyes. Every Rivaini Anders had ever met who had two coins to rub together wore jewelry, and the man was no exception with a gold ring in the center of his lip and large hoops in his ears.

Then Isabela breathed, "Uncle Shadow," and all doubt was dispelled.

She shook her head and backed past Anders. "I can't do this."

She fled up the stairs and out of the main room. Hawke growled a curse and hurried after her, leaving Anders, Fenris, and Merrill to watch the man and woman with no idea what to do while Isabela was gone.

"So," Merrill ventured, "I guess this means she doesn't want to see them?"

"I thought 'get out' was a glaring hint," Anders said drily, looking to Fenris.

Fenris said nothing as he sank back into his chair, not taking his eyes off of the woman and the man Isabela called "Uncle Shadow."

The woman took a seat at an empty table near the door – finding no lack of empty places after many patrons had decided to take the back door to avoid one of Hawke's not-infrequent eruptions of violence. The hulking man moved to stand behind her like a bodyguard, but the more Anders stared, the more he was certain that there was a familial resemblance between them. The man's features were painted with a wider brush than the woman's, but their upper lips described the same bow, their eyes had the same exotic tilt.

"Are we sitting now?" Merrill asked when Anders settled back into his seat with his staff leaned against the table and under his palm. "Should we go find Isabela?"

"Hawke will find her," Fenris said. He had locked eyes with the woman's bodyguard or husband or brother or whatever he was and held the man's gaze without blinking for so long that Anders' eyes watered in sympathy.

Merrill perched on the edge of her seat and fidgeted. "Is this how it's supposed to work with humans or is it a pirate thing? Isabela doesn't usually run away."

Anders snorted. "Qunari."

"Well…" Merrill fidgeted some more. "But she came back."

"Because of Hawke," Fenris said.

"Then it will be all right won't it? Hawke's gone to find her."

The woman raised a finger and Anders was impressed to see Norah actually go to her, nodding at something the woman said in a low murmur he could not decipher from across the room before she went to give the order to Corff. The big man finally took his eyes off of Fenris to lean down to say something in her ear. Whatever it was, she shook her head and gave him a peremptory "No" that they could hear across the room.

He offered some protest before she silenced him with a curt gesture and turned her attention back to Norah, who brought her a bottle of wine and a single glass.

"Well, this is awkward," Anders said sotto voce as they watched the woman pour a glass of wine and drink for all the world as though she were sitting in her own home without curious strangers staring at her. "Maybe one of us should go see where Hawke and Isabela got off to."

"I'll do it," Merrill offered, already rising from her seat.

Fenris made a curt gesture with a gauntleted hand and Merrill dropped back into the chair. "Leave them to their privacy."

"Oh..." Merrill tilted her head and looked speculatively toward the stairs that led to the Hanged Man's guest rooms. "Do you think they're... you know?"

"No, I do not," Fenris said.

"Then why do I need to leave them?"

Not that Anders necessarily disagreed with Fenris, but he was also curious as to the man's logic.

"I think that what they are doing is more personal than sex," was all Fenris said.

Which, when Anders thought about it, said in just one sentence far more about Fenris than he had expected.

Void take that elf.

They were left to wait, watching the two Rivainis without any real idea of what to do about them. The usual tactic of "if it moves, kill it," seemed poorly suited to the moment. Merrill fidgeted until she busied herself gathering up the cards and coins, "In case there's a fight," she whispered, though neither Anders nor Fenris cared for her reasons.

While Fenris maintained his unflinching stare at the strangers, Anders divided his attention between watching them and staring at Fenris.

Although little about their current circumstances was amusing, Anders did find a certain black humor in the fact that Justice was equally as annoyed with him as he was with Fenris. He was annoyed with Anders for his growing obsession with the elf, but he was also angry with Fenris for bringing Anders to the point where they could remember the taste of his lips and the feel of his arms providing an anchor after a night's nightmare-plagued sleep.

Apparently Justice thought that if Fenris could resist Anders when he was naked and begging, he should have resisted him sooner when they could all still pretend the attraction was not there.

All of which was irrelevant to the matter at hand.

Justice rumbled through Anders' mind, forcing his thoughts away from Fenris and back to the strangers who had chased Isabela out of the tavern room.

The woman calmly sipped her wine, but Anders felt her eyes like a weight every time they slid over him as she surveyed the room. Only a month after spending two days as the "guest" of a Tevinter magister, Anders did not trust his assessment of situations, but it seemed to him that she focused on him and on Fenris more than she did on Merrill or any of the room's other occupants.

Anders was ready to join Merrill in fidgeting by the time he finally heard Isabela's low-voiced complaint and the soothing burr of Hawke's voice approaching. He and Merrill rose from their seats first, followed by Fenris, all three turning toward the stairs to see Isabela, grim-faced but determined, stride into the room to stand directly in front of the woman's table. She posed there, one fist on her hip while Hawke moved to stand behind her in a mirror of Uncle Shadow.

"Fine," she said without bothering to sound anything but bitter and unwilling, "I'm here. What do you want?"

The woman set her glass down and tipped her head up at Isabela, asking mildly, "Is that any way to greet your mother?"

"I knew it!" Anders said under his breath while Merrill stifled her gasp with a hand over her mouth.

"You knew?" she whispered to Anders. "They do look alike, don't they? I wasn't sure. You humans all look the same except for the colors."

Anders shook his head and shushed her with a hand gesture. He could get more of Merrill's babble than he wanted any day of the week, but this? This was unique.

"I think it's the perfect way to greet a woman who sells her daughter like a slave," Isabela retorted. "Actually, no, it's too good for you. You should see what we do to slavers around here." She jerked a thumb toward Fenris. "Fenris here has a special _touch_ with them."

Fenris gave a curt nod of agreement. None of them bore any love for slavers, but no one would argue that Fenris' hatred burned brightest.

Isabela's mother took a sip of wine and twitched a shoulder in a careless shrug. "I did what was necessary. Shall I apologize for the ship you lost after I put you in a position to earn it to begin with?"

Isabela's entire stance changed, and for a moment Anders was certain she was going to lunge at her mother. Then Hawke settled a hand lightly on her shoulder until the threat of imminent violence subsided by degrees.

Isabela spat, hitting the floor by her mother's foot. "You aren't worth it. Say what you came to say and get out, and thank Hawke that he's too sentimental for his own good."

Isabela's mother's attention shifted to Hawke, searching his face until she nodded to herself as though she had found what she was looking for. When her eyes returned to Isabela, she said, "I have a debt to pay."

"You're years too late for that," Isabela said bitterly.

"I did not say the debt was to you."

Anders winced. Her mother's delivery was so disdainful that for a moment he felt the barb sink home even though it was not his mother or his pain. His own mother was a memory so distant that it was little more than that of a hand smoothing his hair and tears when he was taken away. He gave thanks that at least when he thought of her, it was without the kind of bitterness that he saw between mother and daughter here.

Isabela rocked back as though she had been struck before she recovered, knees flexing just a little to prepare for the next blow. Anders recognized her dueling stance and wondered if Hawke would stop her if she drew her daggers.

"That's all right then," Isabela said, sounding amused rather than angry once she had fixed her mask back in place. "You must owe a lot of debts in seedy taverns around Thedas."

"To find a fish you seek it in the sea, to find a bronto, you seek it in the Deep Roads, and to find you…" Her mother swept a hand out to indicate the bar, wielding her smile like a knife.

Isabela laughed. The tension went out of her in a rush and she leaned back against Hawke, laughing with genuine mirth. "Is that the best you can do? I have _friends_ who can insult me better than that. Where's Lady Man Hands? Get her in here to show Valentia the Great how it's done. And you, Quique, does she still keep your balls in a little bag with her fortunetelling cards?"

Valentia and Quique. Anders filed the names away to give to Varric when he finally returned from inspecting the latest shipment to have Carta-instigated "fulfillment issues." Their favorite storytelling dwarf was going to regret missing this scene.

Quique – although Anders thought Uncle Shadow suited him better – shook his head. "We aren't here for you to insult us, P—"

_"Don't."_ Isabela moved a hand to sharply cut through the air and his words. "That girl is gone. You can't use the magic of an old name to bring her back."

Anders felt Fenris shift beside him, making the temptation to glance over at the elf almost overwhelming, but he kept his attention fixed on Isabela's family drama. _The magic of an old name _indeed.

"You could show some respect," Quique said, moving from behind the Valentia's chair to stand beside her. "You owe—"

"Quique." Valentia stopped him with one firm word before nodding to Isabela. "We will pay you for a business transaction. Or will the 'Pirate Queen of the Eastern Seas' turn away a chance to own her own ship once again?"

"Bullshit."

Everyone turned to look at Anders, who was almost as surprised as they were by his exclamation. He pressed on under the weight of all their eyes. "What kind of debt do you need to repay that you'd give Isabela a ship for help repaying it? We've had a lot of bullshit flying around Kirkwall lately and as much as I'd like to see someone else get hit for a change, I'm not going to stand by and let it be Isabela."

He owed her. He owed her a large, recent debt even though he suspected that Isabela would never call in her markers on her help getting him out of that chair or what she had done to Pietro for him.

Isabela flashed him a smile over her shoulder before her expression turned stern for their audience. "Don't go picking me as another cause, sweet thing. I can take care of myself."

She put her hands on her hips and offered her mother a challenging stare. "But now that it's out there, he does have a point."

"I'm not buying you a ship," Valentia said. "I'm taking you to _The Lovers' Wake."_

Isabela threw her head back and laughed – no – she guffawed, reaching out to steady herself on Hawke's arm while she laughed so hard and for so long that Anders started to worry that she had cracked somehow. Valentia and Quique watched her, Quique impassively, Valentia with a certain restrained impatience, as though she knew that Isabela would not stop until _Isabela_ was ready to stop.

The guffaws settled into the laughter, the laughter into chuckles, and finally into occasional snickers before Isabela wiped her eyes brushed down the scarf on her hip.

Then all traces of humor disappeared from her face. "Get out."

"I am not lying."

Isabela's daggers were in her hands before Anders registered even the start of her movement. Hawke stiffened when Quique took a step to put himself between Isabela and Valentia, but it was Valentia who pulled him back before she rose from her seat.

He could not understand what Valentia said to Isabela in rapid-fire Rivaini, but she pointed to Hawke, and then to Fenris and Anders. Whatever she said made Isabela take a step back as Valentia left the tavern with Quique on her heels.

_"Bitch!" _Isabela snatched up the bottle of wine from Valentia's table and drew back her arm to throw it at the door before she caught herself and raised the bottle to her lips instead.

By the time she set the empty bottle back on the table, she had calmed enough for Hawke to walk her back over to her seat at the table where less than an hour ago they had been playing cards and laughing.

"You want to tell us what that was all about?" Hawke asked as they all settled down around the table. "My Rivaini only extends to a few bedroom words and 'where can I piss?'"

"I think you caught most of it. Valentia thinks that I'll help her get something she needs to pay a debt."

Fenris snorted. "There is more to it than that."

Everyone's attention turned to Fenris. "You speak Rivaini as well as Arcanum and Qunlat?" Hawke asked.

"No." Fenris pointed a finger at Isabela. "But I read body language. What did your mother say to you before she left, and what does it have to do with us?"

Isabela grimaced. "I'm too sober for this."

"I'm always saying that," Anders said, "but Justice doesn't listen. Just tell us. If there's trouble coming, I want as much time as I can get to get ready to blow things up."

"She said she saw _The Lovers' Wake_ and that I will never captain any other ship but that one in my life."

Merrill was perched so far forward on the edge of her seat that Anders thought it had to be blood magic that her bum was parked there at all. She piped up, "But if she's seen it, what does she need you for?"

"Not seen it, _seen_ it." Isabela's mouth twisted as though she had tasted something foul. "Valentia is a seer. The real thing, even if she only sells nursery tales to most people who come to her to read the cards."

Anders' eyebrows shot up. "A seer? Your _mother_ is a real Rivaini seer?"

"She isn't my mother," Isabela snapped. "She sold the right to be my mother when she sold me to my late husband."

"Fine, that woman is a real seer?" Anders snorted. "Don't tell the templars, she'll be in the Gallows faster than you can say 'help, help, I'm being oppressed.'"

Isabela perked up and made to rise out of her chair before Hawke hauled her back into her seat. "You can turn her in to the templars after you explain what Fenris and Anders have to do with it."

"She pointed at you too," Merrill added helpfully.

Anders laughed. "Hawke's fingers are already in everyone's pies, does he really have to ask?"

Isabela resurrected the ghost of her usual smirk and did something under the table that made Hawke's spine suddenly stiffen. "Hawke's fingers do end up everywhere."

"She's my rock. I don't know what I would do without her," Hawke said, although his sly grin implied there was more to his words than what was on the surface.

"That's it, I'm leaving." Isabela made a token attempt to stand before Hawke pulled her down and into his lap.

"The question, Isabela," Fenris said sternly. "Why is she interested in us as well?"

Isabela rubbed her fingertips over her forehead before reluctantly admitting, "She says the only way I'll get _The Lovers' Wake_ is if you and Anders and Hawke help."

Anders, Fenris, Hawke, and Merrill spoke together, "What—" "What is—" "What's—"

They deferred to Hawke. "What is _The Lovers' Wake?_ I'd ask why she wants us, but if I asked that every time it came up, I'd never get anything else done."

Isabela laughed ruefully and shook her head. "I thought it was an old sailor's story. _The Lovers' Wake_ belonged to a witch two or three ages ago, depending upon who tells the story. She left the land after her husband killed her lover or sold her to her lover or she killed them both. That all depends upon who tells the story, too. Over the ages since it disappeared, sailors will claim they saw it. Usually they say it sits in a circle of calm, even in the middle of the worst storms. It's just a story to tell on a long night with too long a watch and too little rum."

"And your mo—" Merrill caught herself. "Valentia saw it? The seer way? Do you think she'd show me how to do it? Does she just see or does she use cards or—"

"Enough," Fenris snapped. "A better question than encouraging the witch is whether you believe her or even care."

Isabela shook her head and slouched back in her chair. "If she said she saw it, she saw it."

Hawke pushed Isabela's mug in front of her. "And if you don't help her?"

Isabela drained the ale and slammed the mug down on the table before saying, "If I don't help her, I'll always be the first mate, never the captain again."


	3. Chapter 2

The silence after Isabela's announcement stretched until Fenris felt the tension pulling his shoulder muscles tight. Of the five people at that drink-stained table, only Isabela could truly understand what her mother's prediction meant, and what Fenris read off her face was a fear so stark that even a champion dissembler like Isabela could not completely hide it when her pallor and the tight lines around her mouth gave her away.

Hawke stirred himself first. "Then we find out what she wants, and if it's only twice as crazy as all the other things we do, I'm in." He looked expectantly at Fenris and Anders.

Anders studied his fingernails too intently, not looking up to give his answer. "Whatever Isabela needs."

Things had to be dire, Fenris thought, that Isabela did not take that opportunity for an entendre, double or otherwise.

He knew that the others were expecting him to give a response. Isabela had her flaws - many of them - as did they all, but to see her potentially cut off from something she loved for the rest of her life? If Hawke, whom she had personally wronged, could forgive and help her, Fenris would do no less. Or at least he could help her; forgiveness was a skill he had yet to master.

"I will be there."

Anders looked up from scrutinizing his fingernails to give Fenris a fleeting smile before he went back to picking at imaginary dirt.

Anders' sudden shifts in mood troubled Fenris. One moment he was confronting Isabela's mother with all the self-confidence Fenris expected of a magist– a mage, the next he had turned inward. Did he talk to his possessor at times like those? How could a being like Justice help Anders when it had no experience with mortality beyond its short experience with Anders as its host?

"What about me?" Merrill asked.

"Wait for Varric and tell him what's going on," Hawke told her. "You two can make sure Sebastian and Aveline know that we're going down to the Docks to see Valentia. If she sails off to sell us to slavers with impeccable taste, I want you four to come kill everything before they put me in see-through pants and sell me to the highest bidder."

Isabela roused herself enough to grin at Hawke. "I'd pay to see you in see-through pants. Do it for me for Satinalia?"

"We'll work that out later," Hawke promised, pushing his chair away from the table. "Are you sober enough for this?"

"Not drunk enough is more like it," Isabela said, but she rose from her seat and twisted her upper body from side to side to loosen her muscles. Or presumably to loosen her muscles; it might have just been to show off her magnificent assets.

Fenris tilted his head to watch until it slowly dawned on him that Merrill, Hawke, and Anders were all watching him with varying degrees of curiosity, amusement, and frowning disapproval. Isabela caught his eye and winked before she hooked an arm through Hawke's. "Let's go beard the dragon in her den."

"Wait," Merrill's brow creased with her confusion. "You're going to give Isabela's mother a beard? Or does she breathe fire? Do dragons have beards? No one ever mentions them in the stories and dragonlings don't have them, but do they grow them when they get older?"

• • •

"Quique's Valentia's brother," Isabela explained on the walk down to the Docks. "I always called him Uncle Shadow because he doesn't really have a life other than being the seer's shadow."

"Does he have a choice?" Hawke asked.

Isabela shrugged. "Valentia doesn't literally keep his balls in a bag, but she might as well. My grandmother always said the only reason she had a son was to watch over her successor."

"That's kind of..." Hawke floundered for a word.

"Practical," Isabela said. "In a cold-blooded, snaky, slave-owning kind of way. Valentia is just like my grandmother."

From his place behind Isabela Fenris saw Hawke shoot her a worried look. "So you're the next...?"

"Not me," Isabela said with a trace of the bitterness Fenris had seen in her exchanges with her mother. "Valentia would have thought I was worth keeping if I was the next seer or if I was supposed to be the next Uncle Shadow. Or Auntie Shadow."

"Do you have sisters?" Anders asked.

"Not unless Valentia's had more kids since she got rid of me. No, it's supposed to be my younger brother – Nacio – his daughter, so he'll be expected to have at least two kids to keep the whole tradition going if he hasn't already. One is the seer, the other is her guardian. Valentia's probably keeping Nacio locked up somewhere to make sure nothing happens to his balls before he sires the next seer." She tipped her head and laughed mirthlessly. "It's got a ring to it – 'sires the next seer,' right?"

Anders spoke up. "What if Valentia's wrong?"

Isabela's steps slowed while she considered Anders' question before she shook her head. "I... don't know."

"You say that as though Anders had just asked you what would happen if the sun did not come up tomorrow." Fenris observed.

Isabela turned on her heel and poked a finger into Fenris' chest plate. "Have you ever been to Rivain?"

Fenris scowled, the sudden proximity making his skin heat with his reflexive need to defend himself from unwanted touch. He forced back the reflexive flare of his lyrium's power to answer her. "If I have, I do not remember." He said it as coldly as he could to offset the adrenaline heat.

Isabela dropped her hand and took a step back. "Shit. Shit, shit, _shit!"_ She put a fist to her forehead and grimaced. "She's still in my head."

Hawke voiced the question on the tip of Fenris' tongue and likely Anders' as well - Kirkwall inspired this special paranoia. "Blood magic?"

_"No."_ Isabela snorted and waved that away. "She's my– she raised me, taught me to walk and to talk and even if I think she's an ice-cold bitch, I still have her voice in my head telling me that the seer is never wrong." She cast a glance down toward the Docks. "But what if she is wrong? What if I don't need her to get a ship of my own?"

Isabela hugged herself against a gust of cold air that made its way up from the harbor, channeled by Kirkwall's narrow streets into something with icicle teeth, and turned to look down the stairs to the Docks.

"Does that mean we can go back inside? That wind's cutting through to parts I like," Anders asked.

"Isabela?"

Fenris tried to imagine what he would do if his mother came to Kirkwall - if she were even still alive - and how he would respond if she were as antagonistic as Valentia.

"I–" She shook herself out of her indecision. "I'm not getting any closer to buying a ship with what I'm making crewing for Athenril, but if what she's offering sounds too crazy, we can back out. None of you owe her a damn thing."

"Nor do you," Fenris said. "She sold her claim to your loyalty."

Isabela collected herself while he watched, straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin to settle a mask of cocksure amusement on her face. "Right. I'm going to go get a ship."

• • •

Valentia's ship was entirely crewed by Rivanis. Gold gleamed in every ear, in many lips and noses, and he even saw one large man with a ring in his eyebrow coiling rope on deck. He saw their curious looks as the group walked up the dock toward the gangplank, mostly reserved for Isabela. Were they speculating about the seer's daughter, if they knew that much, or just admiring a beautiful woman?

"I'm not setting foot on that ship," Isabela said as soon as she saw the crew. "Valentia can come down on the dock."

Valentia kept them waiting long enough for the cold to seep up into Fenris' bones from his bare feet into the long bones of his thighs. Kirkwall's winters were mostly relatively mild, but on a day like this with grey skies and a hard wind blowing up between the cliffs that led into the harbor, mild was a word that did not apply.

He held himself in stony silence while they waited. If Valentia was to have a looming guardian, he could play the part for Isabela for a time. Beside him Anders shuffled his feet and muttered in growing annoyance.

"How long does it take to leave a ship's cabin? It's not like she has to walk from the far side of Viscount's Keep to get here. Oh no, she needs Isabela, she needs us, but she can't be bothered–"

Fenris barely restrained himself from clamping a hand over Anders' mouth. "If you will be silent, I will forgive a portion of your gambling debt."

If Anders had stuck his tongue out like a child, Fenris would not have been surprised.

"Are you telling me to shut up?"

Fenris felt his lips twitch with the impulse to smile. "Yes."

"You–"

"Anders." Hawke interrupted with a hand on his arm, "She's coming."

Anders subsided with a last promise to Fenris. "We aren't finished."

"When are we ever?" Fenris asked under his breath before he sank into silent watchfulness.

The deckhands stopped their chatter when Valentia emerged onto the deck from below, their attention turning to her with a kind of reverence that Fenris found surprising. In his experience sailors usually saved their reverence for the sea, with lip service paid to Andraste or the Maker or even the Qun. She descended the gangplank with Quique at her back, and only once she had set foot on the dock did the sailors return to their work.

He expected posturing, because that is what he had learned to expect from Danarius, and his enemies and allies. He expected that Valentia would want to grind home the message that they had come to her because she had something they wanted, partly to keep herself in a position of power, and partly to direct their attention away from the fact that she had come to them as the supplicant.

He expected Valentia to be like a magister.

Instead she held out a piece of parchment to Hawke. "First you will bring me this."

Craning his neck, Fenris saw a sketch of a dragon coiled around itself to form a solid circle. It struck a note of familiarity that Fenris could not place.

Hawke, on the other hand, recognized it immediately. He took the parchment from her as gingerly as he might take a new style of grenade from Tomwise. "How do you know about this?"

Valentia gave him a smile as cold as the wind off the harbor. "I saw it, and I need it, and I know that you can get it."

"That's it?" Isabela asked. "Hawke gets you this thing and you give me a ship?"

"No." Valentia cast a scornful glance at her daughter. "He will bring me that amulet and you four will come with me to _The Lovers' Wake_. I need one thing from that ship and the rest is yours."

"I don't have it," Hawke told her. "And even if I did, it's not the kind of thing you just give away."

"I will return it to you when I have what I want from _The Lovers' Wake_. I cannot see everything, but I know that it will act as a key, and without it, there will be no success."

"Are you doing this for Flemeth?" Hawke asked, and with his question, he jarred Fenris' memory of where he had seen that amulet.

He had seen that coiled dragon amulet laid on an altar on Sundermount to manifest a creature so powerful that calling it a witch could not touch the power from Asha'bellanar that had resounded through the lyrium in his flesh and down into his bones.

_Such a curious lad. The chains are broken, but are you truly free?_

Standing on ground sacred to elves, speaking to a legend, Fenris had been more curious than he had remembered in his entire life, what little memory of it there was. Here was a being of unimaginable power that would not have Merrill bow to her, who dispensed riddles and insights and then just _left_ without further exploiting the people who stood in awe of her.

He should counsel Isabela and Hawke to leave this mad quest before it began, but if it gave him an opportunity to encounter Asha'bellanar again...?

Curious lad that he was, he held his tongue.

Valentia shook her head. "I know no one by that name, and if I did it would not matter. Do not waste your time or mine. Bring me the amulet."

Hawke exchanged a look with Isabela before shaking his head. "My sister has it and she's in the Gallows."

"Then fetch it."

Hawke's gaze shifted past Valentia toward the island where the former prison stood. "It isn't that easy."

"You're Kirkwall's Champion. Meredith called you that herself," Isabela said. "Maybe they'll let you see her now. It won't sound good in Kirkwall to let stories get around that the city's savior can't even see his own sister."

Anders snorted. "Because we know that Meredith cares about good publicity."

Sometimes Fenris wanted to stuff a sock in Anders' mouth. "Do you have a better suggestion?" he asked.

"Maybe," Anders retorted. "But let's go see the templars and prevail on their kind souls and tender mercies first. Let's see how well that's going to work. Then we can go chat with some slavers and ask them to rethink the error of their ways."

"Templars are not slavers."

"Of course the mage-hating elf would say that. If _you_ had magic you'd change your tune–"

Hawke stopped them before the bickering could turn into a fight. "Enough. As much as I like to watch the two of you go at it–"

"And place bets on when you'll really go at it," Isabela interjected, giving her mother what could only be called a shit-eating grin in the face of chill disapproval.

Hawke rubbed his eyebrows with his thumb and forefinger and sighed. "Isabela, don't help. As much as I like to watch the two of you go at it, save it for later. We're going to the Gallows to find Cullen. If anyone there can let me see my sister, it will be him."

"And if he doesn't?" Anders asked.

"We'll slay that dragon when we come to it."

• • •

"You don't like it here."

Fenris' snapped out of his almost meditative watchfulness to focus his attention on Valentia when she addressed Anders. The alcove where they waited for Hawke to finish speaking with the Knight-Captain was private for the context of the Gallows, but there were still templars within shouting distance all around them, and he did not see Hawke letting Anders go without a fight if the templars caught on to who and what they had within their grasp. In the end, it was best to simply keep their apostate abomination a secret.

Isabela lounged at the entrance to the alcove across from Fenris and as far from Valentia and Quique as she could get without letting them out of her sight.

Anders shrugged, rapping his staff on the ground. "What's not to like? Surrounded by walls built with the blood, sweat, and tears of hundreds or thousands of slaves, statues that are odes to pain, and oh yes, inside these walls are men and women who are imprisoned for the unforgivable crime of being born. Sometimes I come here just to frolic."

Isabela snorted and said something under her breath.

"The whole city hurts you," Valentia said, taking a string of gold-flecked blue beads from around her wrist to run them between her fingers. "Twisting, turning, cutting." Her words fell into a measured cadence, half-chanted. "A city built on death and pain, twisted streets laid to warp the souls that walk them, screams in the air, blood in the gutters to pour down to feed nightmares." She turned blind white eyes up from the beads to fix them unerringly on Fenris. "If you allow him to stay, this city will consume you both, and innocents will seek justice when all you will have to offer will be vengeance."

They froze into a stunned tableau with the seer caught in the center between Fenris, Anders, Isabela, and Quique until Quique came forward to take the beads out of Valentia's hands and wrap an arm around her shoulder to guide her deeper into the alcove away from prying eyes.

Anders swallowed hard enough for Fenris to hear it before asking, "Did your mother just make a prophecy?"

For once Isabela didn't argue that Valentia wasn't her mother. "Yes."

"And she's good, is she?"

"She is the finest seer in generations," Quique said. He barely looked up while he held a flask to Valentia's lips until she drank enough to regain her strength and hold the flask for herself.

"You don't have to listen," she said, pushing herself out of Quique's hold to straighten her spine and pin Anders with a stare that held no trace of the eerie white that had been there before. "There is always choice when I see what may be."

She turned her attention to the mouth of the alcove in time to see Hawke, cheeks flushed with anger and frustration striding toward them. "Unlike when I see what already is."

"He can't." Hawke clenched a hand into a fist. "Cullen can't let me see Bethany. Only Meredith can issue the order and she isn't in her office. He said I could try again tomorrow."

"And the day after, and the day after that," Anders said. "There are mages here who haven't left the Gallows or seen their families in years because of her policies. Don't count on Meredith."

Hawke rounded on Anders as though grateful to have somewhere to take out his frustrations. "Then what am I supposed to do?"

Anders didn't flinch. "I know a way." He shot an unfriendly look at Valentia. "But she has to go back to her ship. I'm not telling her or showing her anything."

"I do not think you will need to show her anything," Fenris said, remembering her eyes and her words. _This city will consume you both._

• • •

"I know a way into the Gallows."

"Why haven't you said anything before?" Hawke asked. "I could have seen Bethany sooner than this?"

Valentia was back at her ship with Quique, and Fenris and his friends were back at the Hanged Man with a fresh pitcher of bad ale and no sign of Merrill or Varric.

"The tunnels are supposed to be a secret," Anders said, but he dropped his eyes to the table and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "And I was going to tell you about them because I needed your help, but…" He shrugged and shifted until Fenris thought it was more squirming. "Things happened. I'll show you the way now, but I want your word that you'll come back with me later to take care of my problem."

"If you can get me in to see Bethany," Hawke said, leaning forward intently, "I'll help you any way you need."

"Okay, then let's start with some coin. I need to send some messages. She'll have to meet us in the smuggler's tunnels under the Gallows. It's too dangerous to go all the way in."

"Smugglers?" Hawke asked. He dropped a clinking pouch in front of Anders. "I don't remember Athenril's group knowing anything about getting into the Gallows."

Anders tucked the pouch away inside his coat and stood up. "Dwarves. They smuggle lyrium for the templars and they have a 'kill first, ask questions later' security policy. We'll have to go in ready for a fight."

Hawke rose with him. "I'll go with you."

Fenris watched pride war with fear in Anders' expression before he shook his head. "That's okay, Hawke, I've got this."

Fenris gave the barest shake of his head when Hawke cast a quick glance in his direction.

Hawke grinned and slung an arm over Anders' shoulders. "This is my sister we're talking about. I'll come along just in case you need a little bit of Hawke charm to grease the wheels. Fenris, you'll keep Isabela company?"

"As long as she does not request that I glisten for her," Fenris said with just a trace of a smile in thanks for Hawke's perspicacity. Someone had to watch out for that mage, since he seemed to be doing a poor job of it himself.

"You can tell me what color your underclothes are," Isabela said while she refilled her ale and his. "Unless Anders wants to tell me."

Anders called over his shoulder, "No chance. I like my heart in my chest, thank you."

• • •

For the next few hours Isabela kept both of their glasses filled and swung back and forth between swearing that she was going to call off this ridiculous task for Valentia, and promising Fenris that he could have a place in her crew once she was captain of _The Lovers' Wake_.

"I can always use a strong, reliable man. You can bring Anders, too."

"He gets seasick."

Isabela laughed before she went grim with the whiplash speed of the very drunk. "But you don't understand. She found me here."

"Your mother?"

"That bitch," Isabela confirmed. "She found me here and even Castillon hasn't found me here and he knows where to look." She propped her chin in her hands and sighed. "And I promised Hawke that I wouldn't run again without telling him first."

Fenris didn't think that Isabela's promises were usually all that binding. Her transparent upset over this one piqued his interest.

"Will you honor your promise?"

"You know–" she looked up from her drink when the door opened and smiled to see Hawke and Anders. Anders breezed by them with a quick wave on his way to the privies, Hawke headed over to the bar to say something to Corff that made the bartender bark a laugh before he handed over a pitcher of ale.

"You know, I hate that man." She met Fenris' eyes and he could see the conflict there. "He makes me promise something and when I do, it turns out that I mean it. And if I do decide to leave, and I do tell him, he'll either talk me out of it or he'll be right there beside me when I go."

She thumped her mug on the table and gave Hawke a brilliant smile when he came to join them with the fresh pitcher.

"Bastard."

"Only figuratively," Hawke said without missing a beat. "Drink up. We're on for tomorrow at midday when the mages get free time for personal studies."

• • •

"Trap," Isabela called blithely just in time for Fenris' foot to come down on the pressure plate.

Fenris reeled back with a strangled curse, blood gushing from his foot while a patch of spikes pulled back into concealment in the floor. Hawke caught him and pulled him away before the spikes shot up again, this time stained with fresh blood.

"Isabela." Anders shot her a glare hurried forward to take Fenris off Hawke's hands.

"What?" She sounded unconcerned, but still unsheathed her daggers, dropping into a wary stance. "Hawke was supposed to be watching too."

Fenris clenched his teeth against the pain and against his reflexive loathing of the touch of magic while Anders carefully checked the wounds before he used tightly controlled and focused magic to knit damaged sinew, muscle, and skin back to unblemished wholeness.

Fenris thought that might never learn to welcome the touch of magic, but Anders wielded his almost delicately for tasks like healing. He never hurt Fenris with magic the way a magister would.

"I notice Isabela never steps on those things, maybe I should stick one on her chair at the Hanged Man, see how she likes it," Anders grumbled before the first shout alerted them that they had been spotted.

• • •

Bethany stopped Hawke from folding her into a bear hug with a hand on his chest. "It's not that I'm not happy to see you, but if I go back upstairs covered in blood…"

Hawke looked down at himself as though only just realizing that his armor was a walking canvas of blood spray artistry.

He sighed and took a step back. "I suppose telling the templars that you'd just been practicing ancient blood magic rites wouldn't go over as a joke."

"Most of your jokes don't go over," Bethany said with a wry smile. "But I've missed them anyway, Maker only knows why."

"Because I am magnificent," Hawke's smile melted away to nothing. "Bethany, about Mother…"

"I know."

Fenris turned away to watch the tunnel at their backs, taking a few steps down the tunnel to give Hawke and his sister the illusion of privacy while they discussed their mother's death. He felt Anders at his shoulder, a brush along his left arm before Anders was standing side-by-side with him, attention fixed down the dark tunnel. He could hear Isabela's low murmur as she took Thrask aside to let the two Hawkes mourn together for a few minutes.

He didn't look back when he heard the first sob, but Anders tensed beside him.

"Don't," Fenris said just loud enough for Anders to hear when he felt the man start to turn. "Let them have this."

Anders nodded jerkily, keeping his eyes forward. Fenris said nothing when the weight of Anders' body against his left side increased. They stood together in the gloom, and if Fenris was honest with himself, he took his own meager comfort from having Anders there with him in a dank tunnel under the Gallows, listening to the sound of their friend's sobs and his sister's wordless murmurs of comfort.

He had a sister. Would she be someone he could turn to the way Hawke could turn to Bethany?


	4. Interlude

_A/N: Much like the Interludes in Grotesquerie, this chapter is wholly optional in terms of the story's plot. If you're not intersted in seeing Anders and Fenris ramping up the sexual tension, you can skip directly to the next chapter._

* * *

><p>"Trap," Isabela called blithely just in time for Fenris' foot to come down on the pressure plate.<p>

Fenris reeled back with a strangled curse, blood gushing from his foot while a patch of spikes pulled back into concealment in the floor. Hawke caught him and pulled him away before the spikes shot up again, this time stained with fresh blood.

"Isabela." Anders shot her a glare hurried forward to take Fenris off Hawke's hands.

"What?" She sounded unconcerned, but still unsheathed her daggers, dropping into a wary stance. "Hawke was supposed to be watching too."

Anders scowled and knelt to check and heal the wounds before the sprung trap alerted the smugglers they are trying to avoid. The damned traps were the Kirkwall version of a doorbell and thanks to Isabela, they had just rung it.

•••

"Why don't you wear shoes?" Anders asked later when they were all out of the sewers and safely ensconced in the Hanged Man with a pitcher of bad ale on Hawke's tab, a few more coins in their pockets, and another pair of torn trousers for Hawke's peculiar collection.

Hawke and Isabela had left them there to go report to Valentia that they had successfully fulfilled her first request. Anders was just as happy to let them go without him. Something about knowing someone could see his future unsettled him. There had been a statue in Kinloch Hold that had once been a living seer, and see how well that had worked out for her.

To distract himself from thoughts of Valentia, Anders pursued the shoe question with a mixture of genuine curiosity and irritation that Fenris would do something that he thought was fundamentally senseless."It's not like running through Darktown in bare feet can be enjoyable, and it's cold."

Fenris put a foot up on the arm of Anders' chair. "If I had been wearing boots, you would have been picking bits of the sole out of my foot before you healed it today."

Anders eyed Fenris' foot, which was not nearly as dirty as Anders' feet would be if he wandered around barefoot - how was that even possible? He took a moment to admire his own work, noting that there was no way to tell that earlier in the day Fenris' foot had been punctured straight through by wicked spikes.

Magic wasn't too evil for Fenris when it came to being able to walk, was it? Anders glowered at Fenris' foot as though it were entirely to blame for Fenris' running away from him just when they both knew that they were teetering on the brink of something significant changing between them.

"If you don't get that out of my face, I'm going to demonstrate the lightning trick on your toes."

"I thought mages wanted to learn new things," Fenris said, wiggling his toes. "Look at it."

"I've seen feet before, thanks."

Fenris wiggled his toes again while he took a pull from his ale before saying, "But you haven't paid attention. Just look."

Anders gave his foot another cursory glance - heel, sole, arch, five long, hairless toes. He knew it was calloused, but Fenris did something to keep the callouses from cracking and kept the dead skin to a minimum. But so?

"It's a foot. What am I supposed to be seeing?"

Fenris' brows drew down in a frustrated scowl. "You sometimes wear gloves, but not all the time because they interfere with your sense of touch."

"Yes?" Anders said slowly. "But other than number of digits, hands and feet are different things, and if you want to tell me they're the same, then why don't you walk on your hands?"

The look Fenris gave Anders was enough to make most men flinch. It would have been enough to make Anders flinch not that long ago, but they had been through too much together for Anders to take the glare as a threat.

Fenris dropped his foot to the floor and stood up. "Come with me."

"Why?"

"Because I have conceived the ridiculous notion that you are capable of learning something."

Anders blinked warily up at Fenris while he turned over the possible outcomes of giving Fenris what he wanted. If anyone would have told him a year ago that he would trust the mage-hating elf over almost anyone else, he would have laughed outright, but now...

"What about Hawke and Isabela?"

Fenris took a coin from his pouch and flicked it with a thumbnail to send it spinning into the air before he caught it. "Corff will tell Hawke we went to his house." He caught Corff's eye and received a nod in answer before he slapped the coin down on the bar where the bartender promptly made it disappear.

"Are you coming?"

"Fine. Educate me about feet."

• • •

Ser Pounce-a-lot jumped off Anders' bed to rub against Fenris' leg when Anders opened his bedroom door. It was the first time Fenris had crossed the threshold since a month ago, when he had left Hawke's estate (and Anders) to return to his own home.

Anders had tried to tell himself that he didn't like that he had left because Fenris was so vulnerable there on his own, but Justice could be a real pain in the cranium when it came to lying to himself and he didn't let Anders' lie stand. Fenris had once told him that some mages were strong - that Bethany was strong. He had deliberately snubbed Anders with that, and when he had seen Anders' weakness firsthand, he had turned away from him. Anders would be lying if he said that did not sting.

That Fenris had cast himself as Anders' bodyguard thereafter just said it all the louder -you are weak and cannot be trusted.

That he allowed Fenris to keep doing it just encouraged that perception for them both. Something had to change.

Hadn't he been telling himself that for the past month?

Justice wanted him to tell Fenris to go. He wanted to tell Fenris to stay. Torn between the warring impulses, instead he had done nothing.

And now Fenris was in his room wanting to teach him something about feet. He wanted to teach Fenris something about what he could do with an empty bed when they were both sober and willing. The problem was that Fenris had been acting anything but willing.

He watched Fenris with Ser Pounce-a-lot, smiling to himself despite the bleak tenor of his thoughts because Ser Pounce-a-lot had a far better handle on Fenris than Anders did. The cat rubbed against him and meowed, and Fenris did his best to appease him, in this case by scratching him very carefully under his jaw with the tips of his gauntlets.

Ser Pounce-a-lot might well have kept Fenris there all day but Anders was getting restless. He wanted... Maker, what he wanted, he still didn't dare to take.

"Can we get this over with?" He asked more harshly than he intended. Balls. There had to be a better way than this, but if there was, his history of friends with benefits and no strings attached assignations hadn't taught him the trick of it. Fenris was never going to be just a friend (if he even was one now), and the strings... he glanced down at the cuff on his wrist... the strings came pre-attached. If he was just going to fuck Fenris and be done with it, this would all be simple. So of course, it wasn't simple.

Fenris gave Ser Pounce-a-lot a last scratch and rose from his crouch. "Take off your boots."

Anders' eyebrows shot up, but given that the reason for this strange meeting was feet, he would seem a fool to argue. He dropped into the room's one guest chair and started unbuckling his boots. While he worked on that, Fenris went to the washstand and half-filled the basin with water, returning with it and a towel over his arm just as Anders dropped his second boot beside the first.

"Wait, you wanted to stick your dirty feet in my face at the Hanged Man and now you expect me to wash mine? Mine have been safely tucked away from the dirt, which is more than I can say for yours."

Fenris had his eyes on the basin in his hands, but Anders' saw his shoulders tense. Moments ago he had been whining to himself that Fenris was keeping himself too distant and that he wanted more, and here was Fenris offering him some bizarre kind of more. The least he could do would be to see where this was going.

"Wait. Forget I said that. If you want me to wash my feet, I'll wash my feet, but only if you wash yours too."

Fenris gave him a flat look before he set the basin on the floor at Anders' feet and said, "Wash."

While Anders complied, Fenris knelt to scratch Ser Pounce-a-lot's jaw again. "Humans are always asking why elves don't wear shoes," he said to the cat, although Anders knew it was meant for him. "They assume it's because we don't know any better or because we're too poor. I ask you, why did the Maker give us feet designed for walking if he meant for us to box them up?"

He looked up from Ser Pounce-a-lot. "Would you put shoes on the cat?"

"What?" Anders pictured Ser Pounce-a-lot in little kitty-sized boots, and it was an adorable image, but the image of his cat trying to walk in those same boots was more pathetic than cute. "No, of course not, but he has fur to help keep warm."

"So," Fenris swiveled without rising, pivoting on the balls of his feet until he faced Anders. "If I do not wear shoes when it is warm it is less objectionable?"

He took the washcloth from Anders and dropped it in the basin, pushing it aside before quite unexpectedly taking the towel to dry Anders' feet for him.

Anders felt a lump rise in his throat. Was Fenris thawing? Was this some kind of overture to...

He tentatively brushed his fingers over the crown of Fenris' head only to have them pushed away with an irritable shake of his head.

"I didn't say it was objectionable. Exactly." Anders put his hand back in his lap like a chastened apprentice back at the Circle. "I just don't understand. I mean the filth we trudge through and things like those spikes and- ah! Don't!" Anders jerked his foot out of Fenris' hold when Fenris lightly ran the sharp tips of his gauntlet up its sole.

"Feet are sensitive," Fenris said, most unnecessarily in Anders' opinion. He shifted into a sitting position to remove his gauntlets and pull the stirrups off his feet before dipping one in the basin to wash. "I am not too poor to wear shoes." He glanced up from his work to smirk at Anders through the screen of his hair. "I could use the money I win from you to buy shoes."

"Have you ever tried them?" Anders asked. He was genuinely curious now, leaning forward in the chair with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. "You would get frostbite going barefoot on ice if you didn't wear shoes, whether you like them or not."

"If I ever go somewhere with that much ice, I will wear shoes." Fenris made the grudging admission while he scrubbed away the last traces of dirt from his soles. "Just as I would wear a heavy coat if I went somewhere cold enough to require it, but that isn't Kirkwall."

"By that reasoning you should just go naked on a hot day, since you won't need your clothes either." Anders said it glibly at first, but once he had said it, the image was too good to resist. Yes, he wouldn't mind seeing Fenris strip down on a hot day, muscles flexing, lyrium rippling...

Fenris looked up and met Anders eyes, making Anders startle guiltily, certain that Fenris could read those thoughts off his face.

"I need my armor."

"Hm?" Anders was still back on Fenris nude in the sun. "Oh! Oh. Yes."

Fenris finished washing and drying his feet in silence before he pushed the basin and damp towel out of the way under Anders' bed. Rising to his knees, he brought his face near enough to Anders' face that Anders was certain that he had decided to stop running away and just kiss him.

Then Fenris plucked a feather off his shoulder.

"Hey! Those don't just grow on trees you know."

"No, they grow on birds. Give me your hand."

Feeling contrary, Anders straightened and closed both hands into fists. "What does this have to do with feet?"

Fenris' exasperation came through in his words and on his face. "Are you going to prove me wrong about being able to learn anything?"

Anders reluctantly held out his hand. Fenris kept his eyes locked on Anders' face while he took his wrist to hold him in place and drew the tip of the feather lightly over his palm.

"That's-" Anders tried to pull his hand away, but Fenris tightened his hold, tracing the feather's tip down the length of his life line until Anders closed his fingers in an attempt to catch the feather. Fenris pulled the feather away and traced the lines at his wrist instead. "Cheating!"

"It's sensitive."

"Too right it's sensitive," Anders said. He was struggling not to squirm in his seat, both from the ticklish sensation and from the warmth that Fenris' hold on his bare right wrist was spreading through the rest of his body. "Now get to the point."

Fenris gave him that half-smile Anders saw too little of and released his wrist. "The point..." He settled back on his heels and caught Anders' right ankle to pull his foot off the floor to run the feather along the length of his sole from toe to heel, "...is that feet are also very sensitive."

Anders yelped before he could stop himself from making such an undignified sound and jerked his leg to try to free himself. Fenris let him go and set the feather on the arm of the chair.

"You have the feather. Give me your hand."

This was more contact than he had had from Fenris in a month - dreams did not count. Anders didn't trust what point Fenris might try to make next, but if he was offering contact... Anders snatched up the feather in his left hand and gave Fenris his right again.

Fenris turned his hand palm up and held his eyes as he leaned down to press a kiss to the center of his palm.

Anders was suddenly very happy that he had given Fenris his hand. His lips were firm and soft against Anders' palm, and Anders could not resist curving his fingers to stroke Fenris' cheek before he pulled away.

"I-" Anders licked his lips and cleared his throat. "I might need to try that again to see if it's sensitive."

Fenris shook his head and reached for Anders' ankle. This time Anders willingly let him raise his foot and held his breath when Fenris pressed a kiss to the sole of his foot.

He had never once considered feet to have any kind of sexual component. Maybe it was the partners he had chosen, maybe it was because he did so much trudging on them that he considered them utilitarian and not for enjoyment, but he thought it was most likely that Fenris could have kissed the rough skin of his elbow and he would have found it sexual because the tension had been building between them for so bloody long.

He knew what Fenris expected from him when he sat up and set Anders' foot down on top of his thigh. "Yes, it's-" Fenris' thumbs dug into the sole of his foot and suddenly all he could do was groan and slide down in the chair. "Maker!"

Fenris unerringly found every sore spot his feet had accumulated over years of walking around Ferelden and the Free Marches, turning Anders into a progressively less coherent and far more pliant mage than he had been when they started out. By the time Fenris worked all the kinks and tightness out of Anders' toes, Anders was ready to throw himself at Fenris' feet to ask him to do this every day for the rest of their lives.

"Do you understand at all?" Fenris asked when he set Anders' foot down on the floor.

Anders blinked hazily at him and considered telling him that he understood that Fenris had just made him harder than ironwood by rubbing his bloody feet, but that didn't seem like the kind of answer Fenris was looking for.

"You do get knocked down less than the rest of us," he said instead. "And I've never seen you trip and fall."

Fenris nodded. "I have an advantage that I will not willingly give up."

He had an advantage, that was certain. He wasn't tenting his bloody trousers. Anders felt a smile spread his lips as he thought of a way to level that a bit.

"It was a good lesson, I'll grant you," he said, leaning down to bring his face level with Fenris', "but I want to learn something more and for that, you'll have to sit in the chair."

He could see Fenris' suspicion in his narrowed eyes and the thin line of his lips, but he nodded curtly and stood up to take Anders' place in the chair once Anders slid off the seat and onto his knees on the floor.

He held up the feather Fenris had returned to him and made a show of tucking it back into his pauldron. "Give me your hand."

Fenris held out his left hand, unfolding his fingers to allow Anders to see his palm with all its lines and scars. Anders pressed a chaste kiss to Fenris' palm just as Fenris had kissed his, but where Fenris had stopped with a kiss, Anders instead drew Fenris' index finger between his lips.

He had been lusting after this damned elf for too long and a few kisses weeks ago were no longer enough. He sucked Fenris' finger, stroking it with his tongue until he heard Fenris draw a hissing breath between his teeth, then released him. He could feel the tingle of lyrium on his upper lip where the line on the top of Fenris' finger had pressed. He wanted that tingle all over his body.

"Sensitive?"

Fenris nearly growled his assent.

"Give me your foot."

Fenris' expression twisted into a frustrated grimace before he raised a foot for Anders to lift higher with a hand cupped at his heel. He mirrored Fenris again with a chaste kiss pressed to the sole of his foot. Fenris held himself impassively until Anders' pressed another kiss to the underside of Fenris' big toe before he closed his lips over its tip and drew it into his mouth.

Fenris' reaction was immediate and gratifying, his entire body tensing until his grip on the chair's arms made the wood creak.

Anders was already formulating what kind of remark about sensitivity he would make when he had his mouth empty when someone knocked on the door.

"Anders? Fenris?"

It was Hawke.

Anders pulled away in time to get Fenris' foot back on the floor before Hawke opened the door.

He could hear Isabela asking, "Are they finally having sex?"

Time for a very quick lie. "I was just making sure Fenris' foot was okay after that trap you let him step on."

"Well come on then." Hawke either didn't notice or didn't choose to comment on the fact that Anders had his boots off. "Valentia won't talk to us unless you two are there too. That was a wasted trip down to her ship."

Fenris cleared his throat. With his head at groin level, Anders could see that getting out of the chair was going to be a bit of a problem for Fenris at that moment. Gratifying, but inconvenient.

"Give us a few minutes," Anders said quickly. "I have to... get... something else out of his foot. We'll meet you downstairs."

He could see Isabela peering past Hawke now. "Are you sure they aren't having sex?"

"Isabela." Hawke turned to usher her out of the room. "You know I would tell you if they were."

He pulled the door closed leaving Anders and Fenris alone together again.

Anders grabbed his boots to pull them on while Fenris did whatever he had to do to make that bulge in his leggings less noticeable.

"We aren't done here," he said, and wasn't surprised when Fenris' gracious response was a low growl before he stalked out of the room leaving Anders on the floor.


	5. Chapter 3

Anders put Valentia on his list of "least favorite people in Kirkwall" for the interruption of his very promising lesson with Fenris. The fact that he had a low-level ache somewhere in the general (specific, thank you very much) vicinity of his unmentionables, and that it was almost certainly _her_ fault that it was the wrong kind of ache, did not dispose him favorably toward Isabela's mother as he found himself on the dock by the Rivaini ship with Isabela, Hawke, and Fenris, all waiting for her creepy-eyed ladyship to bother to speak to them.

"You'd think we were the ones asking for a favor," he grumbled, pulling his coat a little tighter against a gust of wind off the harbor. It stank of seaweed, sea life – more like sea death – and the effluent that flowed inevitably downhill in a city built like Kirkwall. At times like this even Darktown seemed preferable; it stank, but at least there was no cutting wind.

Nor templars, he thought, giving a templar a baleful stare as the man passed down the dock asking passersby if they had seen an apostate. There were times when hearing that made him want to beat the metal-headed fool over the head with his staff before setting his skirt on fire. Most times.

Right, all times.

But this was _not_ the time.

Still, he contented himself with a mental image of the templar flailing away at the flames until he finally threw himself into the water and sank like a stone. He briefly entertained the thought that he could let his imaginary templar get out of his armor and bob to the surface like a cork, but decided that it was far more satisfying to see a virtual explosion of air bubbles boiling to the surface as the chap sank and stayed there.

"You are smiling," Fenris said, interrupting his thoughts. Fenris followed his gaze to the templar whose untimely demise Anders was imagining in great detail and grunted his disapproval. "Staring will attract his attention."

Anders' bubble of bitter humor popped like one of the templar's last gasps bursting at the harbor surface. He knew that his smile was probably an ugly thing, but he could not seem to find something "prettier" when he was looking at a templar. "But I'm smiling. Maybe he'll think I'm on the pull."

He felt a certain satisfaction to see Fenris' expression twist to ugliness to match his own. "Is that what you want?"

Isabela's timing was, as always, an impeccable pain in the ass. "Boys, kiss and make up. She's coming."

She was indeed, and Anders was relieved to turn his anger on someone who merited it. "Make her work for it," he told Isabela under his breath, turning his attention to watch Valentia descending the gangplank.

The gold in Valentia's ears, lip, nose, and clasped at her throat glinted in the sunlight, but Anders saw that instead of wearing a gown under her long cloak, today she wore close-cut trousers and a leather tunic that he suspected was both thicker and heavier than it looked. Unconsciously he reached back to pat his staff while he noted the long knife she wore on her belt amid a panoply of pouches.

Quique was as always her shadow, looming behind her with his wide bulk showing on either side of Valentia's slimmer figure. Anders assumed the man was armed with more than just his ham-sized fists, but he did not wear a sword like Fenris', and he kept his cloak pulled tight, hiding any weapons he might have on his belt.

Valentia got straight to the point, addressing Isabela, "You will not want to sail on the _Bright Star_." She indicated her ship with a tip of her head in its direction. "Choose another ship capable of a swift journey into open water."

"Why didn't you just say that in the first place?" Anders protested. Dammit, he could be back at Hawke's doing better things with his time. "You didn't need us here for that."

Justice did not agree that what Anders had in mind was a better use of his time, but Anders quelled that silent disagreement with a sharp thought on the merits of learning new things.

"Because once Isabela has selected a ship that satisfies her, we must leave immediately," Valentia said carelessly. She raised a hand without looking back and Quique put a heavy pouch in it. "Before you tell me that I must pay for the ship..." She tossed the bag to Isabela, who automatically snatched it out of the air to the tune of clinking coins. "Just get it done."

"Oh no," Isabela bounced the pouch in her hand, automatically cataloging its weight and contents despite herself, and shook her head. "You don't get to just order me around."

"I am paying you for a service," Valentia retorted with a flash of impatience. "That means I do get to 'just order you around.'"

"No." Isabela tossed the pouch back to Valentia, but Anders was certain she would have preferred to throw it at her head.

Valentia caught the pouch and curled her lip. "Have you changed your mind about _The Lovers' Wake_? I do apologize if I thought a 'pirate queen' who has been reduced to being a smuggler's lackey might want a ship of her own again."

She tossed the pouch to land at Isabela's feet. "Hire the ship."

"If I take a step my boots are going to get covered in sarcasm," Hawke said, folding his arms. "Do you know how hard it is to get that stuff off of good leather?"

It was Fenris who retrieved the pouch, holding it without offering it to Isabela, only waiting for her decision as though he could wait until the next age dawned if he had to.

Isabela did not break her stare with her mother when she reached out and neatly snatched the pouch out of Fenris' hands. "This might not be enough on such short notice."

Quique wordlessly tossed her a second pouch as large as the first.

Anders shook his head. "I always thought your family would be more fun and less creepy."

Isabela snorted. "Now you know better. Come on. I know just who to see."

• • •

"Isabela!" Captain Tamas Mustow of the _Silverite Maiden_ swept Isabela up in a warm embrace that lifted her boots off the deck. "It's been too long."

He set her back down and made a show of patting his pockets before holding his hand out to her, palm up. She grinned and dropped an earring into his hand, grinning even more widely when he raised his fingers to his bare earlobe and snorted.

"Just as quick as ever." He swept his eyes over her companions while he put the earring back in place, nodding to Anders and Fenris, before he offered Hawke his hand. "Serah Hawke, it's good to see you again. Congratulations on your victory with the Qunari. I always said, never trust a man with horns who tells you he doesn't do the old one-two just for the fun of it. He's got to be hiding something."

Hawke clasped his hand and turned on one of his brightest smiles. "Captain Mustow. Thank you for treating my friends so well when they sailed with you."

"We made them pull their weight," Mustow said, turning to offer his hand to first Fenris and then Anders. "How's married life treating you?"

"Married life?" Anders was taken off guard by the question, even if he would never forget the charade of being newlyweds they had enacted for the sake of captain and crew.

Fenris saved him from floundering. "We are still adjusting."

Anders gave Fenris his best simpering smile that turned into a grin when Fenris scowled at him.

Mustow gave them a sage nod. "It's not always easy. I've been married four times and I count myself lucky that three of them still let me through the door when I'm in port." He turned his attention to Valentia. "But I don't have a wife in Kirkwall. Isabela, aren't you going to introduce me to your beautiful friend?"

Valentia held out a hand before Isabela could say anything. "I am Isabela's mother, Valentia."

Isabela's expression darkened with anger, but it was too late. Captain Mustow was delighted. Nothing was too good for his dear friend's mother. Deck hands were roused, orders were thrown, and a whirlwind of activity deposited them in chairs set around a folding table with a bottle of Rivaini wine and glasses for everyone except Quique, who settled into place behind Valentia as her omnipresent shadow, giving off such a bodyguard aura that the captain had not even asked for an introduction.

"A toast," Mustow said once everyone had a full glass. "To friends and family."

"To friends who _are_ family," Hawke added when Isabela made no move to raise her glass.

She nodded to that and raised her glass, meaningfully looking at everyone except her blood relatives as she said, "To the people you can trust."

Anders echoed her toast, raising his glass for a token sip. He smiled when Fenris met his eyes over the rim of his glass, murmuring, "To the people you can trust."

The captain was no fool. He had obviously not missed some of the unsubtle nuances of the amended toasts. He set his glass on the table and turned to Isabela. "This is business, not pleasure. What do you need?"

"The _Maiden_," Isabela said simply. "As soon as you can get her out of port.

"Isabela," Mustow began, "you know—"

She set the first pouch on the table, letting it drop to chink on the wood top. "I know. We'll pay."

The captain picked up the pouch and opened it, eyebrows raising at whatever he saw inside, but he shook his head and set it down again. "I can't. I have commitments. We have cargo coming in a week and I have to be here or my name won't be worth spit when I get back."

"You will be gone four days, five at most," Valentia said, setting a scroll case on the table beside the pouch. "This is the chart you will need."

They waited while he took the chart from the tube and laid it out on the table, using their glasses to weight the corners.

Valentia leaned forward and tapped her forefinger on an empty spot on the chart. "Here."

"That's open water," Mustow protested. "What's this about? I'm not above a little smuggling, but I can't afford to get mixed up in anything too big."

Anders was more curious about how Valentia had the information. He was not about to buy the idea that her visions gave her map coordinates, so how?

Valentia only shook her head. "You and your ship will be in no danger. Just take us there and I think you will find that there is more there than you think."

Anders could see the man teetering on the edge of refusal until Isabela dropped the second pouch beside the first and said, "If the old bag's telling the truth, you're going to have a story that'll get you free drinks at every port, and if she's lying, you still get the coin."

She leaned forward, giving everyone a generous view of her cleavage. "What do you say, Tamas? For a friend?"

By way of response, he stuck two fingers in his mouth and let out an ear-splittling whistle that summoned a man Anders remembered as the bosun. "Go round everyone up, you know most of them are drinking. Tell them we're shipping out in half an hour and anyone not on board misses out on a fat bonus."

He was rising to his feet shouting orders to his crew, but he stopped long enough to issue sleeping assignments to his passengers. "Isabela, you can have a cabin or grab a hammock."

She gave Hawke a sidelong smirk and put a hand on his thigh. "Hawke and I will take a cabin."

Mustow just nodded and pointed to Anders and Fenris. "You two can have the cabin you were in before." He winked at Anders. "We'll get you a bucket."

Turning to Valentia he said, "Your bodyguard can have a hammock, you can have my cabin. I almost miss swinging with the waves."

"Quique will not be coming," Valentia said. "He must stay with the _Bright Star_."

Anders raised his eyebrows, turning his attention to Isabela, who looked even more puzzled than her friends.

"I can live without my shadow for a few days, Dove," Valentia chided Isabela, and for a moment, she sounded like a mother. Not a mother Anders would want to have, but a mother nonetheless. "I cannot live without the _Bright Star_ to take me home."

"Fine. One less hammock to worry about." Mustow waved a hand to dismiss the family matter and just coincidentally keeping Isabela from launching herself at her mother, either in response to her tone or to being called "Dove" again. "Just stay out of the way unless you want to be put to work."

• • •

Leaving the harbor was the easy part, Anders reminded himself as he leaned at the rail trying to gauge how long it would be before his stomach brought him to his knees. He was already starting to feel a bit green around the gills, but judged that he had until they got out into open water before the vomiting began in earnest.

He glowered at the world as a whole and made a two-fingered gesture in the general direction of the Gallows just for the principle of things as they sailed past the island. The sight of it made his stomach burn with bitter bile.

"We'll bring them down one finger at a time," Hawke said, joining him at the railing. He gave the Gallows a one-finger salute that was popular with Marchers before he leaned his elbows on the railing.

"I'll drink to that," Anders said. "When we're on dry land. I might even convince myself that I don't have to water the beer when I do."

"Convince Justice you mean," Hawke said.

"We're one," Anders said. "Mostly. Near enough. It's hard to explain. Especially in Kirkwall."

"Try me," Hawke said. "I want to understand."

Valentia's voice cut through Anders' attempts to formulate an explanation for what Justice was to him. "I had never been within the walls of a mages' Circle before," she said.

Both Anders and Hawke turned away from the rail. Hawke said. "It used to be an Imperium prison."

"It still is a prison," Anders said bitterly. "They all are. Some are just prettier about it than others."

"Ah." She moved to the rail near Hawke and took her strand of beads from her belt. "I would not want Isabela's children raised there, but neither do I want them raised in Rivain."

"Isabela would have to want children and find someone to have children with," Hawke said. He leaned his hip on the rail and faced her. "And then they'd have to be mages, but I heard Rivain doesn't have Circles. Why wouldn't you want mage children there?"

Valentia nodded. "Her children would be mages." She rolled beads under her thumb. "If she chooses to have children."

Anders leaned out over the railing enough to see Valentia's face, but her eyes had not gone white as they had at the Gallows.

"In northern Rivain, where I am from," she said, "we are subject to the Qun. We are freer than those in Par Vollen because the Qunari believe that in time we will give up our tribal customs and cease venerating seers and spirits and that we will see the immutable rightness of the Qun and convert of our own free will. But there are some laws the Qunari do not allow us to ignore. A mage child would be Saarebas, a dangerous thing. You must know how the Qunari treat mages."

Hawke nodded. "I've seen it firsthand."

"Which would you rather have for your children or your grandchildren?" Valentia asked. "The Circle or the Qun?"

"Neither," Hawke said firmly.

"Nor would I," said Valentia. She turned her attention to Anders, effectively dismissing Hawke. "You are growing ill."

Anders raised his eyebrows at the sudden shift in topic and glanced at Hawke, who shrugged and pushed away from the railing. "Your turn. I'm going to see if Isabela and Fenris need any help tying knots."

He left them to go join Isabela and Fenris where Isabela was giving him a lesson in, yes, knots. Before his time as Danarius' captive the thought of what Fenris could do with some skillful knots might have given Anders a pleasant shiver, but now it was just a cold chill. Maybe someday he could take pleasure in such things, but not yet.

The ship hit a hard swell and Anders forgot all about anything except clinging to the rail and suppressing his rising gorge. He startled when Valentia's fingers closed on his right wrist, but she held him in a hard grip when he tried to jerk away. He had to suppress a frisson of panic at even this mild restraint.

"Pressure," she said, pushing his sleeve back to reveal his wrist and forearm. "If you put pressure here, it will help for a brief time." She pressed her fingers firmly into the skin on the underside of his arm two thumbwidths away from the crease of his wrist. "You do it now."

Baffled, he put pressure where she indicated and watched as she dug in one of her belt pouches for an even smaller pouch. "This will take care of the rest. I must put it in water and then you drink thrice daily."

"That's okay," Anders said, taking a step back. "I don't want it."

"Don't be a fool." Valentia left the railing to catch a sailor by the arm and order him to fetch her a mug of fresh water. She turned back to Anders. "You don't want to be at the mercy of every hard wave that hits this ship, nor does your _husband_ want to share a bed with a man who will vomit through the night."

"You don't understand," Anders said, taking another step back along the railing despite himself. "I don't take drugs from strangers. It hasn't gone too well for me lately."

Valentia's expression flickered with scorn and calculation before she schooled it to neutrality and nodded. "I will drink with you. You must see that it is in my interest to see you well for this venture."

Anders shook his head vehemently, thinking of the Antivan woman who had drugged him and turned him over to Danarius. She had eaten some of the food that had knocked him right out and it had not affected her. Assassins did that, why not Valentia?

"Thanks anyway."

Valentia hissed with exasperation and stalked over to Isabela, thrusting the small pouch out to her. "Tell your paranoid friend what this is."

Isabela sniffed the contents of the pouch, dipped her finger into the powder inside and tasted it, then shrugged. "It's _remei._ Take it with some water three times a day and maybe Fenris will get some sleep." She winked at Anders. "Or maybe he won't."

The look she turned up to Valentia lost all its humor. "Don't give me an order like that again, and go somewhere else. I think the old's catching."

The deckhand Valentia had conscripted brought her a mug of fresh water and this time when she offered Anders the _remei,_ he reluctantly took the mug and the pouch from her. The mixture was gritty and tasted of mint and flowers, but his stomach calmed so quickly he had to ask, "Magic?"

"No," Valentia said with satisfaction now that he had done as she told him. "Just herbs. I can give you the recipe. Some of the herbs are native to Rivain, but you should be able to buy them from traders if you know what to ask for."

"Maker please yes," he said, much of his Isabela's infectious hostility toward Valentia draining away from him in the simple relief of knowing he would not be spending days heaving his guts over the side of the ship. "Thank you."

Together they left Isabela and the others to their knotwork and returned to the railing to watch the high cliffs that protected Kirkwall slide by on either side of the ship. "Can you tell me anything about what we can expect when we get to where we're going?"

"What I need is on _The Lovers' Wake,_" Valentia said. "We will board the ship and there will be tests that must be passed to reach my goal."

"Written or oral?" Anders asked. "I always preferred oral."

Valentia did not laugh. She did not laugh so very pointedly that Anders felt her rebuke even though her attention was fixed on the cliffs.

"Right." He combed his fingers through his hair and straightened his ponytail. "Is that all you're going to tell me? Is it some rule with your sort? Never give a straight answer?"

"Yes."

He might not be feeling hostile, but Anders thought Valentia was a very unlikable woman. Then again, he had served with Velanna, and if he could get on with her, he could get on with anyone.

Oh, right, he hadn't really gotten on with Velanna.

"Then you probably won't tell me what you meant when you said Kirkwall would consume me and Fenris."

"No."

"Is there anything you will tell me?" he asked.

"Perhaps." Now her lips curved in the faintest of smiles. If he had not been practicing looking for even the faintest hint of a smile with Fenris, he would have missed it.

"You're having me on now, aren't you?"

The smile grew by the barest of degrees. "Yes."

Despite himself, he barked a laugh, cutting it off abruptly with a guilty glance toward Isabela. Somehow it felt disloyal to find anything funny when it came from her hated mother.

But really, the woman had just settled his seasickness when he had been unable to come even close to it. That ought to earn her a little leeway from someone she had never personally wronged.

Other than dragging him away from his first intimate moment with Fenris in far too long.

Right, strike that, she was still on his shit list.

• • •

The cabin was just as tiny and cramped as Anders remembered from his trip with Fenris from Kirkwall to Amaranthine. This time at least he would not be chained to Fenris, and they now had ample practice in sleeping in the same bed.

Void take it, that was all the practice they had together, and after a day spent running up and down Kirkwall's ten thousand steps, fighting smugglers, and the drain of Hawke's meeting with Bethany, Anders' spirit was willing, but even with a warden's stamina, his flesh was weak.

He hung his coat on a hook and hurried in the chill air to get under the blankets, cursing the very existence of winter under his breath. He was just getting the space under the blankets warm enough to calm his shivering when Fenris finally came through the door. He spared Anders a single glance before he turned away to remove his sword, cloak, and armor, stripping down to just his leggings before he blew out the room's single lantern and hurried to join Anders in bed. He paused only to spread his cloak out on top of the blankets as an additional layer of warmth.

And then he was there – right there – and everything was suddenly awkward. The bunk was hardly large enough for them to sleep without touching at all. Should he? Could he? He was tentatively reaching out to touch Fenris when Fenris made a low sound of annoyance and closed the distance between them to slide one arm under Anders' shoulders to pull him against the heat of his body.

"You are well?" Fenris asked, and Anders had to snort a quiet laugh while he wriggled and shifted until he had his head pillowed on Fenris' shoulder, an arm across his chest, and his leg drawn up over Fenris' thigh.

Better than he had been in too long. "Mmhm. You?"

"Suspicious," Fenris said. "Why did she leave her brother behind?"

Anders made a sound through a jaw-cracking yawn that was meant to be "I don't know," but came out more like "Ahh nn nnn."

Fenris still got the gist. "Did she tell you anything?"

"Tests." Fenris' body was so delightfully warm after the constant chill of the ocean air that it was all Anders could do to try for coherent answers before he fell asleep to the silent lyrium lullaby that played in his bones. "She said there would be tests but she wouldn't say what kind, and she wouldn't explain what she said at the Gallows."

Fenris grunted. "Isabela said she would be like that. I don't trust her."

"Who do you trust?" Anders asked, half-asleep and barely aware of what he was asking until Fenris' breathing stopped for the space of a handful of heartbeats.

When he breathed in again, Fenris said, "I often ask myself that question. Go to sleep."

Anders tried, but sleep was slow in coming after Fenris' reply.

* * *

><p><em>NN: The existence of a Qunari settlement in Rivain and the information about the Qunari tolerating local customs in the expectation that they will die out with time come from the DA wiki and the RPG books. Isabela has demonstrated ignorance of Qunari custom, which might be incongruous if she were raised under the Qun, but my interpretation boils down to a combination of her youth when she was married (13 is a rather self-involved age) and the fact that Qunari cultural imperialism is described as surprisingly "benign."_


	6. Chapter 4

Fenris fell asleep more quickly than he expected, lulled by fatigue, the ship's rocking, and by Anders' heat and weight in his arms. If he dreamed, he had no chance to remember when Anders jolted him out of sleep with barely audible whimpers and clutching fingers scrabbling for purchase on his chest.

"Shh…" He closed his hand over Anders' fingers before he could leave scratches and murmured empty reassurances in Arcanum that he could only hope would penetrate the veil of nightmares.

Because he could. Because there were times in his life when he would have given anything for someone to tell him that the darkness would end if he could just hold on. Because hearing Anders in pain...

He set his jaw and finished the thought because he could not allow himself to flinch from it now. Because hearing Anders in pain brought him an echo of that pain.

When had that happened? It was easy enough to pinpoint – when he had walked down a long corridor, seeing _that_ chair, and Anders strapped in it. He had walked step by step back into a nightmare he had spent years running from. He had felt the empathy that could only come from knowing exactly what those straps felt like, what the sleep deprivation felt like, what the utter helplessness and aloneness felt like. What being made into a _thing_ felt like.

He did not pity Anders for his experience, because he would not be pitied himself, but he understood, and now Anders understood some of what had molded Fenris into what he was, even if only by a fraction.

Anders finally stilled, his breaths coming slow and hot against Fenris' collarbone, all the stiffness slipping away until he was just a heavy weight against Fenris' side.

Only a fraction.

He waited until he was certain that Anders was deeply asleep again before he slowly, carefully extricated himself, moving Anders' arm, his leg, freeing himself and sliding away, out of the warmth, out of the bunk, into the cold air in the pitch dark cabin.

He should have known that a man who had survived life as a Grey Warden would not be so easily escaped. He heard Anders stir and blankets shuffle in the dark. He could picture Anders feeling around in the narrow bunk, trying to find where Fenris had gone.

"Fenris?"

The cabin lit with the tiny wisp of magic that Anders summoned. "Fenris?"

Fenris turned his back to Anders and found his tunic in the dim light. "Go back to sleep."

He could feel Anders' gaze burning into his back, but he didn't turn around while he jerked on his tunic, buckled on his armor, settled his sword across his shoulders, and finally pulled on his gauntlets. He expected questions or accusations or pleas, but all he heard was a sigh when he drew on the first gauntlet.

The spell wisp winked out as soon as he had the other gauntlet on, leaving him to find the cabin door in utter darkness.

• • •

He avoided Anders for the rest of the short voyage, finding reasons to help with tasks that kept him away from everyone, climbing the rigging, hauling the ropes, keeping watch high above the deck where he could watch Hawke and Isabela, Valentia, the crew, and Anders. Isabela spent the time teaching Hawke some of the basics of sailing a ship the size of the _Silverite Maiden._ Perhaps she hoped her dream of a ship of her own would come true soon and she might convince Hawke to come away with her. Valentia stayed near the ship's bow, watching the empty horizon for most of the day and early evening.

Anders did exactly what Fenris expected of him. He moved among the crew, speaking to them, letting them show him cuts and wounds, stiff joints and bad backs. In a few cases, after speaking with a man for a time, he would take the man below deck for ten minutes or even an hour before they would come back up into the cold winter daylight, the sailor smiling and laughing, Anders smiling before sending him off to pick up his work again.

Sometimes Anders would look up and search Fenris out among the rigging, shielding his eyes with his hand against the cheerless sunlight. He would search until he found Fenris' silhouette, and his smile would fade before he turned away to find someone else to talk to and help.

Fenris spent the second night on deck, curling up with a borrowed blanket long after Anders had given up on waiting him out and had gone down to the cabin they were supposed to be sharing.

The captain shook him awake near dawn, crouched beside him, putting a hot mug of coffee into his numb hands before he had time to do more than blink blearily at him.

"You and your man aren't getting on?" Mustow asked, holding his own mug up to his face to let the steam warm his lips and nose.

Fenris covered his confusion with a sip from the mug that scalded his lips and mouth, but woke him more surely than the coffee could have. "I said we were still adjusting."

"Still," Mustow said, "it can't be so bad, else you wouldn't have married him in the first place."

Fenris shrugged and hung his face over the mouth of the mug. "Right. I would never have married him."

He didn't look up to see the expression on the captain's face, part quizzical, part annoyed, part simply confused. It was all born out of a lie he had been forced to perpetuate, and he felt no pride or joy in fooling a good man.

He did not have to endure more questioning at any rate. He caught the movement from the corner of his eye before Valentia joined them. "Your ship is off course," she told Mustow.

The captain rose from his crouch to frown down at her. "We're using the chart you gave us. If we're off course, it's not our fault."

Valentia pointed up to the grey pre-dawn sky. "Do you see the tail of the White Hart? If you were not off course, we would be sailing directly toward it, would we not?"

Fenris unfolded his legs, not even wincing at their stiffness, though it drove down into his bones when he rose to his feet. He followed Valentia's pointing finger, but her words meant little to him. He knew nothing of sea charts or navigation beyond following the rising and setting of the sun, but Mustow was frowning and turning back to the helm.

"Wyland, are you awake back there?" he bellowed as he strode back to take the ship's wheel. "Why are we off course?"

Fenris followed out of curiosity, Valentia just ahead of him. The hapless Wyland stumbled back from Mustow's push.

"I don't know what you're talking about. I'm following the chart."

"You've been drinking again," Mustow growled, hauling on the wheel to correct the ship's course. "You know what I told you would happen if I ever smelled so much as a drop of beer on you."

"I never did!" Wyland protested. "I never did! I'm following the bloody charts!"

"It isn't him," Valentia said, putting a hand on the captain's arm. "It's where we going. It does not want to be seen. Follow the compass only and we will be there by mid-day."

"What are you talking about?" Mustow asked, pulling his arm out of her hold. "If you lied and you're putting my ship in danger, I'll put you over the side."

"I am not. When you see land, my daughter, her friends and I will take one of your dinghies the rest of the way. You may stay at a safe distance until we return."

"You're going to ask?" Mustow said with a frown. "Or tell me?"

"One pouch of coin is asking. Two is telling," Valentia said. "You come out of this well ahead with no risk save to a single small boat you can easily replace." She pointed back to the wheel. "Just follow the compass."

Mustow looked past Valentia to Fenris, but what was Fenris to say? He shrugged. "I am here for Isabela's sake and she wants this."

Mustow glowered at Valentia, but he returned to the helm, checked the compass, and put the ship on course to an empty piece of sea.

• • •

Fenris saw it first and called to one of the hands who was up in the rigging securing a line. "Over there."

The hand followed Fenris' pointing finger and gave a surprised, wordless shout before calling down, "Land!" He scrambled down out of the rigging with Fenris fast behind him while the crew gathered on the deck.

Valentia was at the captain's side before Fenris' feet touched the deck. He saw her take Mustow's spyglass from his hand and raise it to her eye before she nodded and passed it back.

He caught the last words of her order to the captain, "—dinghy. We'll go when it's within rowing distance."

Isabela sidled up behind them and took the spyglass from Mustow's unresisting hand, raising it to sight along the horizon until she found was she was looking for and moved to the railing without taking the glass away from her eye.

"Do you see it?" Hawke asked.

Fenris had to smile at the way Hawke kept reaching for the spyglass and stopping himself, fingers opening and closing covetously while he bounced up and down on his toes.

"Isabela—"

Fenris lost track of Hawke's pleading as Anders stepped close and shaded his eyes to stare in the direction Isabela was pointing the spyglass. "You should be glad," he said too quietly for anyone but Fenris to hear. "Once we're done here, we can go back to Kirkwall and you can go back to pretending I'm just some body to guard, or stop pretending and just finish running away."

Fenris' stomach dropped before it clenched. There it was; Anders was no longer going to allow the pretense that nothing was amiss between them.

"This is neither the time nor the place," he told Anders, because that much at least was true. They had "tests" to face. Tests that Valentia had felt warranted two people skilled with blades and stealth, one lyrium warrior, and an abomination. Whatever the tests might be, Fenris was certain they would be fighting for their lives at least once before the sun set.

"No, it never is," Anders said, taking a step away from Fenris. "It's never the right time. I don't think you want it to be the right time."

Isabela let out a squeal of delight, drawing Fenris' attention away from Anders. "I see a mast! _Three_ masts!"

Hawke finally managed to get the spyglass away from her without it going over the railing and into the water. He put it to his eye to search the horizon. "Where?"

When Fenris looked away from their byplay, Anders had moved away, heading for the ladder that would take him below decks, and people were calling to Fenris to help them get the dinghy ready before they reached their destination.

• • •

The land mass turned out to be a bleached white semi-circle thrust out of the ocean and darkened by algae and… was that moss? Fenris did not know, and Isabela only murmured, "You don't see atolls this far south. Coral dies if it's too cold."

"Looks dead to me," Anders observed.

Hawke and Fenris had taken the oars and were faced away from the atoll, feet braced on the bench behind them for leverage while they hauled on the oars and trusted Isabela to guide them.

"Call it blood magic and forget about it," Hawke advised. "We can be naturalists later. Right now I want to get out of this flimsy little boat and onto that big one over there."

The ocean had been relatively calm when the dinghy had been lowered into the water and the five passengers had climbed down, but the closer they drew to the atoll, the rougher the water grew from crashing against the white walls.

"Hang on!" Isabela called, and Fenris clenched his fingers on the oar handle only to have it thrown out of the oarlock by the force of the wave that lifted and dropped the little dinghy.

Isabela caught the oar before it could hit her in the side and shouted, "Watch it!"

Behind him he heard Anders shout a curse over the growing roar of the surf against the walls of the atoll. "We're not going to make it in!"

If they went under, Isabela had cautioned them that the coral would not be their friend; it would tear the skin right off their bodies, and this close to the atoll's walls, it was mere feet beneath the dinghy's hull.

Isabela shouted her orders to Hawke and Fenris. _Harder. Wait. Port. Starboard. Pull. Pull. Pull, damn you or we're going under!_ But Fenris saw her eyes widen in fear, lips parting to shout a warning, and when he cast a glance over his shoulder, he saw a wave rising that looked certain to swamp the boat and either take them under or smash them into the coral walls.

Anders shouted – no screamed – the words of a spell and thrust out an arm cracked and fissured with Justice's rise to bolster Anders' magic. Fenris felt the magic in the air right down to his bones, but the wave froze and Isabela shouted at him to stop staring and _pull!_

As the dinghy surged forward, Fenris had an opportunity to examine the wave. His first impression that it was frozen was entirely correct. It was – as far as he could see while still rowing so hard that even his sword-trained muscles burned – frozen all the way to the sea floor a few feet below them.

Then Isabela was calling hurried orders, navigating them through the opening in the atoll and into…

…into the stillest water Fenris had ever seen.

Beside him Hawke dropped his oar and followed suit to stare.

"What am I seeing?" he asked, but Fenris had no means of answering.

The rough surf that had pounded them on their way into the atoll stopped dead at a line in the opening in the wall, and the walls that they had all mistaken for coral showed themselves to be something very different. He could pick out long thigh bones and staring skulls, the curving cages of ribs and the wide butterfly shapes of pelvic bones. Not all were human or even elven. He saw skulls with horns, and others that were three or four times the size of a humanoid's skull, but whatever the species, the truth was that this semi-circle in the middle of the sea was made wholly of bleached bones. The air itself was so thick with magic that Fenris felt the steady thrum of it through his markings and in his lungs until it felt as though he were breathing treacle with each breath.

"Maker," Anders said in a reverent whisper.

Isabela shook herself out of the shock they all shared and leaned over to tentatively dip a finger in the water. Fenris was at the wrong angle to see the result, but when she sat up and flicked her finger, the water droplet moved as slowly as a floating butterfly on a summer's day before it dropped back into the water.

"Valentia?" she asked of the woman who had sat stoically through the whole wild ride into this calm.

"It is part of the magic that protects the ship and the thing I must retrieve. You have nothing to fear."

"You could have told us a little sooner," Hawke said, twisting in his seat to face her. "Do you have any other surprises to tell us about?"

"The ship will be trapped," Valentia said carelessly. "Surely you can manage that."

Anders snorted. "Have Hawke watch for the ones on the floor."

Isabela snapped, "Don't make me throw you overboard."

"Enough," Fenris said. "Let us get you your ship."

Isabela lost some of her anger and smiled toward the ship that sat sedately in the middle of the silent lagoon. "She's old-fashioned, but she looks fresh out of the shipyard for all that."

"What do you call that kind of ship?" Anders asked while Hawke and Fenris bent their backs to the oars again.

"A galleon," Isabela said. "Three masts, three decks not counting the stern castle and forecastle – main, cargo, and steerage. She'll wallow like an overfed noble, but with a full crew, most pirates won't find her worth the casualties."

"You would know," Valentia observed. "Consider this a chance at an honest living."

"They also," Isabela went on as though her mother had not spoken. "Can be outfitted for the most cunning smuggling you've ever heard of. Athenril will need a change of smalls, she'll be so hot for my baby."

Fenris noted the proprietary manner with which she already spoke of the ship and smiled to himself. He could already see Isabela at the helm and Hawke at her side.

Together, Hawke and Fenris maneuvered the dinghy alongside _The Lovers' Wake,_ gliding past the gilt lettering with the ship's name over turquoise blue paint at the prow that confirmed that they had indeed found the legendary ship in an atoll made of bones where nothing moved, not even a breeze, with the exception of their small rowboat.

Isabela stood easily and lifted the aft seat to take a rope and hook out of the storage space underneath. "I always like this part," she said before steadying herself to throw the hook up over the _Wake's_ railing easily twelve feet above them. The hook caught on the first throw, and once Isabela gave it a hard tug to test it, she was swarming up the rope with an ease that made Hawke whistle appreciatively. Although that might also have been the view up her short dress.

She disappeared over the railing and left the rope dangling before reappearing with a rope bundle that she hooked at the railing before she let it drop, unrolling along the way to reveal a rope ladder. "Come on up, nothing's moving up here, but stay close to the rail when you get up."

Valentia went first, climbing the rope ladder with as little effort as climbing a ladder up the side of a house. No doubt this would be much more challenging if there were any waves at all, but on a sea as stable as turf, the task went easily, with Anders, Fenris, and finally Hawke following her the ladder, but not before Hawke tied off the dinghy to Isabela's original rope.

Just because nothing was moving now was no reason to be complacent.

The air was even thicker on the _Wake's_ main deck, but it took Anders' startled, "Oh!" to draw Fenris' attention to a fresh oddity. He was passing his hand in front of his face before turning it to examine his palm. "Look at the dust."

"What about the dust?" Isabela asked absently while she and Hawke looked around for signs of the traps Valentia had warned them about.

"It's frozen," Anders said. "Look where the sunlight passes, you can see it just hanging there, and if you pass your hand through it…" He demonstrated and turned his palm toward Isabela. "It catches."

"Lovely. Magic dust," Isabela said after a cursory glance at his palm just to humor him, but Fenris followed Anders' directions and saw the dust in a thick haze in the sunlight. How many years of trapped dust hung in the air around the ship?

"No," Anders said with forced patience, "not lovely. Do you know what happens in grain silos if you set a spark to all the dust hanging in the air?"

Isabela folded her arms under her breasts. "Get to the point."

"It explodes," Anders said. "Kaboom! Maybe this magic dust won't catch, but maybe it will, so no fires, no lanterns, try not to even strike a spark. I'll provide the light."

"Fine," Isabela said. "No fire, but just you remember that, too, "Ser Suck on a Fireball.'" With that she turned away from Anders and back to her mother. "Which way, Valentia?"

Valentia pointed. "Down."

"Cargo or steerage?" Isabela asked impatiently.

"Just down," Valentia said.

Hawke caught Isabela just before she took the steep flight of stairs under the forecastle that would lead down to the cargo deck. Wordlessly he pointed at the first step, and together they crouched over something for several minutes before there was a loud snap and Hawke stood up to toss away pieces of a wickedly barbed mechanical device.

"Mind that," he warned the others. "There's a nasty contact poison on it just for people like me and Isabela. Remind me to get new gloves when we get back to Kirkwall."

Hawke and Isabela cleared the way down the stairs with Anders following close behind them to provide light from his staff. They found another barbed trap at the bottom where the narrow stairwell opened out into a large, pitch black cargo bay.

Twice they stopped to disarm traps in the floor, each time cautioning that the poison on the trap was as dangerous as the mechanical portion.

Fenris was tense, waiting for something to finally come to life and attack them. He could not bash a trap with his sword when most of them were so cunningly concealed that it took a trained eye like Hawke's or Isabela's to note it in the first place.

After the cargo bay was cleared, there remained two doors at the fore just behind a set of stairs that led down again, and a narrow hall aft. Isabela turned to Valentia, hand on hip and asked, "Well? This deck or steerage?"

Valentia took the beads off her belt and ran them through her fingers before shaking her head. "Down, I think, but the magic that protects this place protects even against my sight."

"How did you know it was here at all if that's the case?" Anders asked.

"I had help," Valentia said and held up a hand to silence Anders' next question. "That is all I will say."

Fenris ventured away from Anders' light to glance at the stairs that had to lead down to the steerage deck, but they led into complete darkness and he wasn't about to venture down there when so much of the ship had already proved to be trapped. He would not be the one to trigger a trap that would blow a hole in the hull to sink the ship with them in it.

"Anyone else have any feelings about this?" Hawke asked.

"I do," Anders said. "Can we go home now?"

"No," Hawke said. "Any other feelings? You know, magical ones? Sparkly ones? Ones that would get us off this ship before something tries to eat my face or make babies with me?"

"More like make babies in you," Isabela said, peering down the hall toward the aft cabins.

The constant, oppressive feel of magic was so heavy for Fenris that he could offer no suggestions. Anders shrugged and lifted his staff as the light at its tip brightened. "I can't feel anything over the background magic and before you ask, that goes for Justice, too."

Fenris watched with interest when Valentia followed Isabela toward the hall. Isabela glanced back at her mother and opened her mouth to say something before she closed her mouth again. Valentia was watching the floor rather than Isabela and missed that, but Fenris saw it and wondered right up to the moment that Valentia stopped mid-stride with her foot awkwardly poised just over the floor.

When she slowly withdrew her foot, Isabela blithely said, "Oops. Trap."

Hawke gave Isabela a meaningful look and hurried over to disarm the trap.

They searched the rest of the deck, finding empty crew cabins and traps on every door and in every cabin, sometimes on the floor, sometimes on the ceiling or even in the walls. Hours passed while Hawke and Isabela painstakingly found and disarmed trap after trap until the tension of waiting for a real attack had worn everyone's nerves – save Valentia's – down to frayed threads.

"Not even an old coin," Isabela complained when they finished searching the last of the cabins on the cargo deck.

"The girl has a table laid with a feast and complains that the cheese is too hard," Valentia observed. "That was always her way."

Isabela rounded on her, one finger raised to point at Valentia's chin. "One, you don't know me to know what's my way or not. Two, I am not a girl."

"Ladies, please." Hawke put himself between Isabela and Valentia. "I want to get out of here before the captain decides we've died in here and leaves. I don't know much about ships, but I don't think we can crew this thing with just the five of us."

Isabela glared at Hawke before tossing her head and pushing past him, back out into the cargo hold. She caught Anders by the sleeve on her way to drag him and the light back with her, forcing the others to follow or be left in the dark.

The top of the stairs down into steerage was untrapped, but Isabela proceeded cautiously down each step until she reached a door at the bottom. At least Fenris thought it was a door from his vantage near the top of the stairs until Isabela spent a full minute running her hands over its surface before standing up and cursing. "There's no handle, no lock, not even a seam I could fit a blade into to pry. Turn around, we'll try the cargo hatch."

The cargo hatch was a ten foot by ten foot square, two-panel door in the deck directly under a similar opening in the main deck that allowed larger cargo to be lowered directly into the cargo or steerage holds with a winch. Considering the steep and narrow confines of the stairs off the decks, the cargo hatches were vital to get any real use out of the holds.

The hatch was largely unobtrusive, set flush with the deck with pry holes set into its surface to be used to lever it open.

Isabela took a pair of long metal pry bar from where it was stowed near the hatch and gave one to Fenris. "Just do what I do."

He took the pry bar and was ready to set it into the hole when his markings flared brilliant white in reaction to a strong surge of magic directly out of the pry hole. Acting on instinct he turned the bar and used it to knock Isabela's bar out of her hands before she could set her own in its hole.

"What was that about?" she snapped, rubbing her hand over her bracer as though to soothe the jarred wrist beneath. "It better be good."

"There's magic in there," Fenris said, pointing to the pry hole. "Who says there can't be more than one kind of trap here?"

Anders came to crouch near the hatch, waving a flap of his coat over the hole – "To clear the dust," he explained – before he held his hand over one of the pry holes and slowly lowered it until flickers of lightning crackled between the hole and his hand. The magic lit his face from below, casting shadows in unfamiliar places to make his face a mask of the man Fenris had come to know. He stayed there, electricity dancing between his hand and the trap until sweat beaded at his temples and started a slow roll down his cheek and jaw.

Finally he fell back on his ass and shook his head. "I can't do it. I'm not sure I know a mage strong enough to do it. If you stick a big metal pole in there, you're going to end up a cinder, and maybe us along with you if you set off the dust."

"We'll have to find another way around," Hawke said.

Fenris considered the situation, turning a slow circle to remind himself of what he knew of the deck and ship so far. They had searched the entire deck and found no other way down to the steerage deck, there was a blockage at the bottom of the stairs into steerage, the cargo bays were trapped, and sparking a fire might or might not send the entire ship up in an explosion.

"If we're all here for something we can do…." Anders said slowly.

"Then one of us has a way through this," Isabela finished just as slowly, casting her eyes over each of them before she straightened and pointed a finger at Fenris. "That magical fisting thing!"

Fenris knew exactly what she meant as soon as the words left her mouth and nodded. "Yes. Of course." He said it without emotion and turned toward the stairs. How could she know what it felt like to phase through a solid object? How could she know what she was asking?

"Take this," Valentia said, holding out Hawke's dragon amulet to him.

He took the amulet and frowned. "Am I supposed to wear it?"

"No. But it holds remnants of old magic. It may be useful to you."

Fenris suppressed the urge to spit and merely tucked the amulet in a belt pouch to leave his hands free. Anders followed behind him on the stairs to light his way and softly said, "Be careful," when Fenris drew a deep breath to steel himself and let the power surge out of his body, casting a brilliant glow in the stairwell's close quarters.

He pushed his hand through the solid black barrier, letting his breath out with a slow hiss at the pain of feeling his body coexisting with another solid object before it broke through on the other side of the barrier into empty air. With a last glance up the stairs at Anders, he bared his teeth and pushed his entire body through the barrier and out into the dark hold on the other side.

On this side, lit only by the glow that came from the lyrium, the open hold was eerie and seemingly endless after the blue-white lyrium light exhausted its range. The barrier was just as solid on this side as it had been on the other, but he saw the light gather and swirl in a circular depression on its surface like a wisp of Anders' magic caught in a dust devil.

Knowing the number of traps they had found on the cargo deck, Fenris was loath to explore without Hawke or Isabela to search out any others.

"Pfaugh." He resisted the urge to spit on the deck and possibly trigger a new trap, then pulled the amulet out of his pouch and held it up to the swirling light on the barrier.

His ears popped at a sudden release of power and the barrier disappeared, letting Anders' mage light flood down around him.

"The way is open." It was obvious, but he felt he had to say something after walking through a magical barrier and bringing it down and in the face of the relief that broke over Anders' expression on seeing him.

"Listen to him," Anders said, pressing himself flat against the wall of the stairwell to let Isabela and Hawke go ahead of him. "'The way is open,' like he does this every day."

Fenris moved back up into the stairwell to stay out of the way while Hawke and Isabela resumed their methodical search for traps. While he had been occupied, Anders had taken the time to cast another illumination spell on one of Hawke's daggers, making it easier for him to search without Anders at his back the whole time.

Anders tentatively reached out to brush fingertips over an unmarked piece of skin on Fenris' arm and said, "I'm glad you're okay."

Fenris twitched his arm away. "We are still in danger."

"Right." Anders dropped his hand. "Forget I said anything."

When Fenris looked up, Valentia was silently watching them from the top of the stairs. Let her watch, seer or not, she could not fully understand what she was seeing. Her gaze made him remember the amulet he still held.

"Take this." He tossed the amulet and saw her unerringly snatch it out of the air. It seemed that Isabela had inherited more than just her looks from her mother.

"Come on down," Hawke called after too much silent waiting. "There aren't any traps down here that we've found so far."

Anders sighed and pushed himself away from the wall to wait for Fenris to precede him down into the steerage hold. It was just as open and empty as the cargo hold, interrupted only by the thick column of the main mast that anchored the entire ship around itself. The foremast and mizzenmast reached only down to the cargo deck, anchored fore and aft to bisect the empty crew quarters there.

There were two more doors in the deck's aft wall. One was a normal wooden ship's door with its high threshold and heavy wood, the other was reinforced with steel bands.

Isabela pointed to the reinforced door, "Probably the brig, and I didn't see a pantry, so that would be my guess for the other."

Hawke sighed and stepped forward. "I don't think we're going to find Valentia's whatsit in a sack of potatoes. I say we try the brig first."

No one was surprised when the door was locked, nor were they surprised when neither Hawke nor Isabela was able to pick the lock.

Anders voiced everyone's opinion. "Of course not. That would be too easy."

Everyone's attention turned to Fenris. Of course.

He braced himself, let power flood his markings again, and moved to push his hand through the door.

It encountered unyielding wood and an answering thrum of lyrium from the bolts and bars of it throughout the door that reinforced it at every point he might use to penetrate.

"Hn." He shifted two feet to the left and pressed his hand against the wall. Again lyrium sang back at him, denying him access.

"Check the pantry," he said. "I'll try that wall. The door and this wall are reinforced, I can't get through."

They waited until Hawke and Isabela declared the pantry also free of traps before Fenris tested the wall between the pantry and the brig only to find it was also shot through with lyrium.

"I can't. If these are tests for all of us, this is not my test."

This time all eyes turned to Anders, who widened his eyes. "What am I supposed to do?"

"How do we know?" Isabela asked. "Use a spell, ask Justice, glow. Just figure something out."

Fenris remembered what Anders had let slip about Justice's… feelings about lyrium and tugged Anders' sleeve to draw him aside enough to quietly say, "The lyrium. Can you—" _or Justice_ "—sense anything about the lyrium in the door and walls?"

Anders gave him a flat look before he nodded and pulled his sleeve out of Fenris' hold.

Fair enough, he supposed, but Fenris did not like the way that stung.

Anders moved to face the door into the brig, his shoulders rising and dropping with a heavy sigh before he stiffened and brilliant cracks opened in his skin. He raised a hand to the door to pass it just over its surface before he paused at chest level with his hand over the center of the door.

Fenris felt a chill at hearing Justice's voice doubling with Anders' when he spoke. "There is a circle here, open in the center." He turned eyes made blind with the light of the Fade to Valentia. "Give me the amulet."

She put the amulet in his outstretched hand without speaking or flinching away and Anders turned to press it to the spot where his hand had hovered.

The door swung open as silently as if its hinges had been oiled that day and all the power that had held this ship in stasis flooded out of the door with a force that staggered Fenris back before he braced himself against it as though against a gale.

Valentia came forward to take the amulet from Anders' nerveless fingers while the cracks closed, the light faded from his skin and eyes, and he slumped as he became to all outward appearances, just a man again. He slid down against the wall between the brig and pantry door rather than stand against the silent howl of the power that pushed out of the room.

He met Fenris' eyes and all Fenris could think was that he would never have a relationship with just Anders, and he did not know if he could tolerate a relationship with both Anders and a Fade spirit, no matter how worthy Anders and Justice's old friends claimed it to be.

Perhaps Anders read that from his face, or perhaps he was only thinking of waking alone yet again, but his jaw tightened and his shoulders straightened before he broke away from Fenris' gaze to crawl to the door to watch Valentia.

Now Fenris realized that Hawke and Isabela were not simply silent in the face of the magic sweeping out of the brig, they were immobilized, as frozen as the dust motes or the water under the ship. He pushed through the invisible force to his friends, reflexively shouting over the silent energy as though that would reach them in their stasis. "Hawke! Isabela!"

He clasped Hawke's biceps to shake him just as the silent roar stopped entirely. The crushing press of magic and power was gone, and the world swayed under his feet, staggering him.

Hawke swayed along with everything else, but his expression was a mask of shock. "How did you get here?" he asked. "And what just happened? Are we going to sink?"

"No," Anders said, pushing himself up off the floor. "The spell broke. Everything's moving again, including the water out there. I think you and Isabela were caught in the spell once the door was opened because you two don't have magic of your own to protect you."

Valentia came to the door of the brig carrying a stone coffer barely larger than a loaf of bread in both hands. Fenris saw the amulet gleaming in a circular depression on its lid and understood both how the spell had stopped and how they had been used.

"No." He started toward her, reaching for his sword. "This is too powerful. This is too much."

"Fenris!" Hawke clasped his bicep before he could finish drawing his sword. "Don't! This is Isabela's _mother._"

Fenris let his arm drop. "And will that help us when she turns that power on the world?"

"This is not for me," Valentia said. "It is only to repay a debt I have owed for too long. I swear to you that no harm will come to you or yours because of this."

"Why should I believe you?"

Isabela answered for her. "Because she's a bitch and she might be a liar, but she lives by her word. If she swears, she means it."

Fenris clenched his fists until his claw tips drew blood in his palms, then turned away. "I will not stay here."

"Well," Isabela said, looking at the coffer in Valentia's arms. "Doesn't that seem a little anticlimactic? Shouldn't we have had to fight something to get here? Killed a guardian or something?"

Valentia gave her a level look before turning away with the coffer. "Murder is not always the key to getting what you want. Was teamwork not trial enough for you?"

• • •

Valentia sat in the dinghy with the coffer held tightly in her lap while Hawke and Fenris pulled at the oars and followed Isabela's instructions to get out of the lagoon and out into open sea again.

"I'll get a crew in Kirkwall as soon as we get back," Isabela said between shouts of _Pull! _"And then I'll come back here and get the _Wake_ in to port and then we'll see. I can't wait to show everyone that Captain Isabela is back!"

Getting out of the lagoon was no easier than getting in and Fenris had to bend all his strength and attention to following Isabela's orders to keep their tiny boat from being swept up on the bones by the buffeting waves. He ignored Anders' shout that he had spotted another ship until they were past the crisis point and pulling away from the atoll with every stroke of the oars.

"That's—" Isabela froze in mid-observation. The waves around them froze, beside him Hawke stopped mid-stroke, the air grew thick and heavy with a familiar magic again, and Valentia was rising from her seat.

Fenris turned in time to see her jump over the side onto water frozen so firmly by the unbroken contact of the coffer's spell that she could stand on it. Anders shouted and snatched at her, but she dodged away, running across water that froze under her feet with every step while the magical calm spread out in a circle around her, weakest at its edges and strong enough to stop time for all but those protected by magic at its center.

She ran toward the ship that Anders had spotted, its lines and masts familiar in silhouette. "That's—"

"—the _Bright Star,"_ Anders said at the same time.

She was twenty yards away by the time the magic weakened enough for Hawke and Isabela to pull themselves out of its influence and into motion. Isabela finished her sentence as though she had never been interrupted. "—the _Bright Star._ Quique, you bastard."

Her eyes narrowed, darting from Valentia's empty seat, across the water, settling on her mother's running figure. "You _bitch!"_ she shouted at Valentia's back while the woman barely slowed her pace as she ran across hillocks of water and darted around the tallest peaks of frozen waves. She seemed to be searching for something else to shout and settled for "That's Hawke's amulet!"

But Valentia kept running, and the sea thawed around them until they had to row or be swept back to the atoll.


	7. Epilogue

Quique protested being left behind, but ultimately bowed to Valentia's will as he always did. He waited with the _Bright Star's_ dinghy while she made her way down an almost invisible track to a hidden cove at the bottom of one of the Wounded Coast's many treacherous cliffs.

The winter wind cut through her, making her ears ache and spread their pain out into the bone, but she ignored it as she did all things that came between her and her goals. Gulls cried and wheeled in the air above her while the rising wind whipped the sea into white-topped waves. There was a storm coming, but she would leave the Free Marches before it struck.

She carried the coffer she had gone to such trouble to retrieve; finally paying a debt she had accrued as a young woman facing a vision of herself barren, with no children to continue her line. She owed a debt, and she would see it paid.

Valentia bowed to no man or woman, but she bent her head as she held out the stone coffer to its rightful owner.

"I told them what I could. It is up to them if they will choose those branches of the tree of fate or not."

The dragon took the coffer in her talons, sniffing the stone before delicately nipping it between her teeth to toss it high in the air with a flick of her head. Valentia and the dragon watched it spin to the top of its arc and start its tumble back toward the ground.

The dragon rose up on her hind legs, balanced by the great length of her tail and snatched the coffer out of the air, crushing it in her jaws.

The air thrummed with a sudden release of power that blew Valentia's hair back in a streaming tangle before the world went still around them, the wheeling sea birds stopping in their flight, the waves stilling as though a winter freeze had left everything caught in ice after it passed by.

The dragon dropped back to her forelegs and sucked both the magic and her own mass into a human-shaped hole in the air, in the end leaving only a human woman in a mean gown, her hair grey, her face lined, but she held herself straight and strong, and looked at Valentia with a dragon's yellow eyes.

The world drew a collective breath and came back to life around them.

"It is always so," the woman who was and was not a dragon said when the change had passed, a glimpse of a dream dragged to this side of the Veil. "They will choose, and choose, and choose again. In this world, and in all the others they cannot see."

"And my daughter...?"

The woman smiled a dragon's smile. "Our daughters do as their natures dictate. As do we all." She turned to leave Valentia for the shelter of a cave that had been hidden by the dragon's bulk, but paused to pass a last command over her shoulder. "Don't forget to send someone to return my token. The boy may have need of it in the future."

• • •

The atoll receded into the distance, no longer unnoticeable with its magical heart removed. The Rivaini ship's sails were barely visible silhouetted against the horizon, and all Anders and Fenris had to do for the next two days was rest. Once they reached Kirkwall, there would be work to be done, sailors to be hired, but for the moment...

Isabela held the captain's spyglass to her eye to watch the _Bright Star_ until even the hint of its sails on the horizon was gone.

"Let that be the last I see of you," she said under her breath before lowering the spyglass to find Hawke watching her with that disconcerting intensity of his. "What?"

"About what your mother said," he began carefully, knowing he was treading a floor strewn with traps that were as likely to hurt Isabela as they were to hurt him. "After this trip, I tend to believe that she really does see things."

"She does," Isabela said, setting her hip against the rail while she faced Hawke.

"So what she saw for you?" he said, taking a step to close the distance between them. "Do you think she might have sent you away to—"

"Don't even think about taking her side," Isabela snapped, pushing him back with a hand on his chest. "She could have found a better way to 'protect' my children than selling me off like a piece of meat when I was just a child."

Hawke put a hand over hers and didn't move when she pushed. "I'm not taking her side, but I can't hate her."

"She took Flemeth's amulet," Isabela reminded him.

He shrugged. "She's the reason you'll be captain of a legendary ship. Captain Isabela, captain of _The Lovers' Wake._ You'll be the talk of every port from here to Par Vollen and beyond."

She smiled despite herself, knowing he was right. It wasn't every day, or even every age that someone brought a legend made real into port, even if the Dragon Age was shaping up to be an age of legends. "It doesn't make us even," she said stubbornly.

"If I could kill your husband again, I would," Hawke said, grim lines drawing themselves beside his eyes and along his brow. "But none of this was my point."

Isabela carefully extricated her hand from under his and put it on the railing, waiting.

"My point," he said, when she didn't ask, "was that if you ever do decide that you want to have little mage children, I'll be there for you." He hurried on when her face twisted, caught between shock and fear. "In any way you need. I'm not writing my name in as father, but you could put me on the list? I'm only half insane, I only beat my younger siblings with small trees when they needed it, and I can make at least three dozen silly faces on demand."

"No." She took a step back and shook her head hard, sending locks of hair flying. "Uh uh. Just because Valentia said that my children would be mages doesn't mean I have to have any at all. I don't _want_ children. They tie you down. They need things. They—"

"Grow up to hate you?" Hawke asked when she faltered.

"They aren't part of my life," Isabela said.

Hawke nodded slowly. "Okay then. I won't bring it up again, but I won't be sorry if you change your mind either."

"If you get much sappier," she said, "I shall either have to be ill or throw you over the rail, and I hate being ill, so let's find something more fun to do."

"What do you have in mind?"

Hawke followed Isabela's gaze when she started to grin and shook his head, already beginning to smile himself. "What are you going to do?"

• • •

The ship's captain leaned on the railing next to Anders, grinning in a way that made Anders vaguely uneasy. "Finally got your sea legs."

"You could say that." Anders patted the belt pouch that held Valentia's powder. "I like your ship a lot more now that I'm seeing more of it than a grand tour of its buckets and heaving over the railing."

"You know that you and your husband are welcome here, even if I didn't get you the warmest send-off last time. Old Arn's leg's as good as new thanks to what you did the last time you were with us, and don't think the men haven't told me about you seeing to a few other things for them this time around."

Anders let the last part slide. What he cured for a sailor that did not affect his work was between him and the sailor, and maybe the sailor's bed partners. Indirectly at least.

And someone on this ship might as well be getting sex, since apparently Fenris had secretly sworn himself to the Chantry. He and Sebastian probably got together to talk about the sanctity of having blue balls for Andraste.

Which... was probably unfair, but Anders' own case of blue balls was making him feel uncharitable.

"Anyway," Mustow said, pulling Anders out of his musing, "Isabela reminded a few of the lads that you missed that traditional dance thing she told us about, so we thought we should do it now."

Anders craned his neck until he spotted Fenris where he was helping sailors coil rope. "I don't know..."

"Come on," Mustow said, tugging on Anders' elbow to pull him away from the railing. "Stefan's the best accordion player you'll find for miles and our lot can keep a good beat going." His smile took a more serious cast. "I'll break out the rum and it will get their minds off the atoll that appeared out of nowhere today in the middle of a sea too cold for coral. A little healing magic's one thing, but this was big magic and I need their minds clear."

He gave Anders' elbow a light squeeze. "Do you understand?"

Anders had to pull his eyes up off the deck to meet Mustow's gaze. "I understand." It was always about soothing people's fears, about showing them that not all mages were the way the Chantry painted them. He should be grateful to the captain for wanting to see mages differently, but it only made him tired. It felt like a fight that could never be won, or even fought to a draw. Dal had tried and even with a king on his side he was only making small improvements for mages.

"Then go get your man and we'll be ready for you."

Speaking of losing battles.

Anders dragged his feet over to Fenris while the captain stuck his fingers in his mouth and gave a piercing whistle that instantly got his men's attention. The deck hands abandoned Fenris to the rope while they went to gather around their captain.

"What is that about?" Fenris asked, looking past Anders. His eyes slid to the side when Anders moved to intercept his gaze and slid again when Anders moved again until he finally frowned when Anders moved in his way a third time.

"Oh good, look who's decided I exist." Anders folded his arms, knowing his smile showed all the hostility his frustration had been building for weeks. Every time he thought they were going to take a step forward, Fenris decided to take two steps back and he was tired and frustrated. "We're to give a command performance."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that the captain wants us to do our special newlywed dance," Anders said. The absurdity of the situation left him torn between anger and laughter. For weeks Fenris treated him as though he were some magister to bodyguard and not like... like... He did not know what the like should be, but he did know that whatever it was, it was not this.

_Take the excuse. Just take the bloody excuse, I know you want to._

He held out his hand. "We're supposed to be keeping up appearances, Sweetheart."

Fenris' lip pulled up at one corner in a faint sneer before he reluctantly put his hand in Anders'.

Even his hand was a study in contrasts - cold and sharp on the top where he was exposed when holding his sword, warm, and even with a swordsman's callouses on his bare palm, softer underneath.

Fenris squeezed his hand a little too hard and said, "Do not step on my feet."

Anders laughed and squeezed back just as hard. "Don't give me a reason to."


	8. Postscript

"So," Anders said while they were still out of earshot of the assembled crew and their friends, "I don't suppose you know any traditional wedding dances?"

Fenris gave him a sidelong look. "And when would a slave have learned such a dance?"

"I don't know," Anders said. "But we're going to have to fake something real soon. Do you think they'll settle for seeing us put our arms around each other and shuffle in a circle?"

"Here you go, boys," Isabela called. She had untied the blue sash from her hips and came forward with a shameless grin on her lips. "You can't do this properly without the traditional handcuffs, I mean binding."

She slipped one tail of the sash under Anders' cuff and knotted it. It was a little tighter than Anders would have liked, but she ignored his attempt to complain and reached for Fenris' wrist, grabbing it with a snake-quick dart of her hand when he tried to pull away. She threaded the sash through Fenris' cuff with more difficulty with his gauntlet covering much of it, but soon enough they were tied together in an all too familiar manner.

"We couldn't let that part of the tradition slip could we?" she asked.

Anders wanted to be angry with her, but how could he? It was Isabela; he might as well be angry at Ser Pounce-a-lot for sleeping in the sun or Fenris for being... right, strike that, he _was_ angry at Fenris for being Fenris.

Fenris gave the sash a disgusted look. "I do not think shuffling will satisfy them."

To finish out the indignity, Isabela held out her hands and gave a _gimme_ wiggle of her fingers. "Hand over the weapons. We wouldn't want any accidents from our newlyweds."

Anders reluctantly unshipped his staff and put it into her hands for her to hand off to a sailor who immediately passed it off to Hawke. They might be accepting of Anders' status as an apostate, but the sailor had handled the staff as though magery might be contagious.

Fenris hesitated until Isabela tapped her foot and said, "Don't make me get it off you."

He unsheathed his sword and held it carefully by the blade to offer Isabela the grip. "I promise we'll take care of it," she assured him, taking the grip in both hands and making a silent _oof_ as the full weight of it settled in her hands. She left them then to stow the sword in one of the equipment chests that dotted the deck before she rejoined Hawke to slide an arm around his waist, regarding them with an expectant grin.

"Are you ready?" Captain Mustow called. A short man with a scar that cut a pale line along the right side of his jaw through his dark beard stood at his side holding an accordion, clearly waiting for the cue to begin playing. Another sailor had produced a long whistle carved from bone or pale wood, and all eyes were on them.

Anders startled when Fenris leaned close to put his lips by Anders' ear to murmur, "Battle can be like a dance. Remember our practice?"

All Anders could think of for a moment was Fenris' breath like a spider web brushing his ear, but once he got his libido to stop capering giddily toward his groin, he started to smile. Yes, they had practiced fighting while chained together, and when they got it just right, it was like a dance.

The musicians must have taken his smile for the signal to start playing. Isabela stamped out a beat on the deck with her boot until the sailors took up the rhythm, clapping, stomping, and even beating the rhythm out on a half-full water barrel. One of them, a man with a clear tenor, began to sing.

_Up aloft amid the rigging  
>Blows the loud exulting gale<em>

Anders met Fenris' eyes, caught his hand for a quick squeeze, and released it to move toward the open circle with steps timed to fall with the beat. He had no real idea what he was doing, but he put a sway into his step that he had learned from women – and a couple of gifted men – who had made good money to draw the eye and mind to their bodies.

Never let it be said that he had wasted all the money he had spent at the Pearl in Denerim.

Fenris lagged behind him, either reluctant or simply unsure what his part should be. Anders kept moving until he ran out of slack in the sash tied between their wrists, then pivoted on his heel, bringing his bound arm up to spin under the sash before he gave it a hard pull.

Fenris had not expected Anders to pull as hard as he did and stumbled forward for Anders to catch him in his arms. "Pay attention," Anders murmured in his ear, letting his lips brush Fenris' earlobe before he pushed away from Fenris with a hand in the center of his chest. "Unless you want the mage to show you up."

He pivoted again and raised the cuffed arm over his head to provide the axis for a spin. If they had been fighting, he might have thrown out an arc of ice while Fenris guarded his flank. It was a natural, practiced movement after the hours they had spent training together.

_Like a bird's wide outstretched pinions  
>Spreads on high each swelling sail<em>

This time Fenris caught his free arm as he came out of the spin and pulled him close, pressing the ridge of his breastplate into Anders' chest. "How far can you run like this?" Fenris asked, and the predatory light in his eyes made Anders's heart stutter so hard that he wondered if Fenris could feel it.

"Are you going to chase me this time?" he asked before Fenris looped the sash over Anders' left shoulder, pulling Anders' right wrist across his body before the loop dropped to his waist. He was caught, but before the fear could rise at being restrained, Fenris released Anders' unbound arm and pulled hard on the sash.

"I have already caught you."

With the help of a little push from Fenris, Anders found himself spinning out of the hold to the sound of whoops of approval from their audience. He might have been annoyed, but he found himself grinning like a maniac instead, even while he tried to catch his footing as he came out of the spin. He caught himself on his free hand as he went to one knee, his other heel describing an arc along the decking so gracefully that it almost looked as though he had meant to do it.

Certainly it seemed all the more intentional when Fenris somersaulted across his back with his unbound hand planted between Anders' shoulder blades, both for balance and to leave his other hand free to keep the sash loose enough to allow the movement.

_And the wild waves cleft behind us  
>Seem to murmur as they flow<em>

He landed neatly beside Anders and tugged again on the sash to help Anders rise from the deck. Anders pulled back and for a moment they had a graceless tug of war before Fenris' greater strength won and Anders found himself pressed against Fenris' armor again.

"If I have a bruise…." he hissed, jerking away, taking several steps backward only to have Fenris pull him back against his chest.

"You'll do what?" Fenris asked.

He was smiling.

Anders forgot the music and the pretense of the dance and just stared.

"You'll do what?" Fenris repeated.

Anders wanted to kiss him. He wanted to kiss him so badly it hurt.

He turned on the slowing beat to walk away, but this time Fenris' hand closed over his and pulled; it was gentle, but no less demanding than the earlier pulls.

_There are loving hearts that wait you  
>In the land to which you go<em>

Anders went to him, stopping chest to chest, eye to eye. He could feel Fenris' hand in his – cold metal and warm flesh – and Fenris was looking at him. Fenris was seeing him.

Whether Fenris leaned in to him or he leaned toward Fenris did not matter. He forgot the fading music and the watching crew. He forgot everything because what he saw in Fenris' eyes was that some decision had been made.

Then Isabela laughed and broke the spell, "Just kiss him already!"

They both snapped their heads around to pin her with angry stares, but she was unfazed. "Oh that's right, I forgot, the tradition's that the clan – their family – would carry the couple to their home and lock them inside until the next sunrise." She grinned. "You know. For a good marriage."

She snapped her fingers. "Go get 'em boys. You want these two to have a good marriage, don't you?"

They could have fought off a dozen sailors bent on picking them up and awkwardly carrying them down to their cabin, but it might have required considerable bloodshed.

Anders gave in with only a few complaints, but Fenris cursed and twisted away from the eager hands until Anders finally shouted, "Hands off my husband!" He invested the words with enough magic to make some of the men clap their hands over their ears, but the manhandling stopped abruptly.

"Isabela got it almost right," Anders said with as much dignity as he could muster considering what he was about to propose. "But it's not the family. One of us has to carry the other." He batted his eyelashes at Fenris and said as smarmily as possible, "And Fenris is _so_ much stronger than I am."

He pushed the sailors back and looped his free arm over Fenris' shoulder. "I'm ready, dear."

Fenris looked at him with narrowed eyes before he plucked Anders' arm off his shoulder as though Anders had dropped a dead fish there, then picked Anders up and slung him over his shoulder, heedless of his protests and complaints about being poked in the stomach by Fenris' armor.

The crew serenaded them with more cheers and bawdy suggestions. The last thing Anders saw of the main deck was Hawke, apparently swept up in the moment, throwing Isabela over his shoulder to mock-paddle her backside to the rowdy approval of everyone, including the captain. His last thought before the deck was gone from sight and Fenris' shoulder was jouncing into his stomach with every step was that he wanted to hear what Isabela would do to Hawke to even the score.

Then they were in the dark and narrow passage that led back to their cabin and Fenris' was whisking him down the hall and into their cabin. Anders pushed the door closed before Fenris could turn to do it himself and wriggled even if it did make poky bits of Fenris' shoulder and armor seem even pokier.

"Put me down!"

Fenris bent at the waist to change Anders' center of gravity and as easily as that, he was sliding down the front of Fenris' body until his feet hit the floor and they were once again chest to chest.

Fenris' mirage of a smile was gone, but he held Anders' eyes without flinching, without hostility, and without that incredibly irritating slide away from him that had been the norm for them for weeks.

Anders gave the tiniest shake of his head before he clasped Fenris' cheeks between his palms and kissed him. It was a frustrated kiss, a needy kiss, a demanding kiss, a press of lips that said _I will not be pushed away or denied,_ and Fenris responded as Anders needed him to. He closed his arms around Anders to hold him there, to assure him that he was not going to turn away or push him away or take a step back that was only going to put his back against the wall anyway.

Somewhere deep in his mind, Anders heard a faint sigh from Justice _– Just get it over with –_ before the spirit withdrew as far as he could to let Anders have the moment to himself as much as it was possible for them.

And Fenris was kissing him.

It was not a first, but when he let his hands slip from Fenris' cheeks to glide down his neck and over his chest before he finally took the freedom to pull him into a tighter embrace, Fenris did not pull away, and that was a first of sorts. A corner of his mind noted that Fenris did not catch his hands or hold their lower bodies apart, but instead, he leaned the weight of his body into Anders, leaving their bodies pressed together in an unbroken line from their chests down to their thighs.

When Fenris took a half step forward to press his thigh up between Anders' legs, Anders finally broke and groaned, leaning their foreheads together while he canted his hips to rub the swiftly hardening length of his cock against Fenris' leg.

"Don't change your mind," he said hoarsely.

Fenris gave a tiny shake of his head and pressed his thigh a little harder between Anders' legs. "I won't."

Anders caught the start of a moan in his throat and found it forced his voice down to a whisper. "Don't run."

Fenris took longer to answer this time before he said, "I'll try."

* * *

><p><em>AN: Thank you for reading this far. I hope you've enjoyed the ride even half as much as I've enjoyed writing it. This is not precisely the end of this postscript, but due to ff net's rating restrictions, the consummuation of a large amount of unresolved sexual tension between these two can't be posted here. If you want to read it, there's a link to my AO3 account in my profile where you can find the full version of Latibule and many more stories in the Volutions AU setting._


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